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SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. 
'After the painting by Peter Vandyke. 



lEnglisf) Classics — .Star Seines 



THE RIME 



i 

OF 



THE ANCIENT MARINER 

BY 

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 

EDITED FOR SCHOOL USE 

BY 

CARLETON ELDREDGE NOYES, A.M. 

INSTRUCTOR IN ENGLISH IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 




GLOBE SCHOOL BOOK COMPANY 

NEW YORK AND CHICAGO 



yA 



SECOND GOPV, 



t;533 



TVSro COPIES HfiCElVBO, 

l.lbr«ry of CoBfrMi^ 
OffUooftI, 

JUN 9 - 1900 

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Copyright, 1^)00 
Globe School Book Company. 




6S3iO 



MANHATTAN PRESS 

474 W BROADWAY 

NEW YORK 



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LEWIS E. GATES 



PREFACE 

As The Ancient Mariner, because of the difficulties it 
presents, may be taken up to advantage toward the end of 
the pupil's preparation of the English reading required for 
admission to college, this edition of the poem is designed 
especially for the use of more advanced students. Assum- 
ing on the part of the pupil some knowledge of many of the 
texts assigned, the Introduction is intended, not only to 
prepare the student to understand the poem it'self, but also 
to point the way to a comprehensive study of literature in 
its larger significance ; and it attempts, accordingly, by the 
use of the historical method, to set The Ancient Mariner in 
its right relations with reference both to Coleridge and to 
its place in English literature. By thus presenting the 
poem in its wider bearings, the book aims to suggest certain 
fundamental principles of literary investigation, and, by 
bringing the student to a true conception of what literature 
is, to stimulate an interest in further study. 

The text here printed is reproduced without change from 
the edition of Coleridge's Poetical and Dramatic Works 
published in 1829. This reissue of the definitive edition 
of 1828 has been chosen as the standard for the text, 
as it was the last to receive Coleridge's personal super- 
vision. The trifling inconsistencies in punctuation and in 



vi PREFACE 

the use of capitals and quotation marks, as well as the 
archaic spelling "chuse", have been retained; for these 
little oddities are so slight as not to be misleading, and 
they lend a quaintness in keeping with the spirit of the 
poem. The exact reproduction, without regard to present 
standards of correctness, of the poem as Coleridge left it, 
furnishes an authentic text, and brings the reader close to 
the poet's intention. 

Acknowledgment is due to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & 
Company for permission to use the citation from Lowell's 
address on Coleridge. 

Cambridge, Mass., 
April, 11)00. 



CONTENTS 



Introduction. 

I. Biographical Sketch . 

II. Pen Portraits by Contemporaries 

III, The Composition of the Poem 

IV. The Antecedents of the Poem 
V. The Form of the Poem 

VI. Judgments and Appreciations 

VII. Suggestions to Teachers . 

VIII. Examination Questions 

IX. Chronological Survey 

X. Bibliograpliy 

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 

Notes 



PAGE 

ix 

. xxii 

xxvii 

xxxiii 

xli 

xlv 

lix 

Ixii 

Ixiv 

Ixvii 

1 

25 



Appendices : 

A. Relative to the Composition and Sources of the Poem . 47 

B. The Text of 1798 53 



vn 



INTRODUCTION 
I. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

A LITTLE more than a hundred years ago there was pub- 
lished in Bristol, England, a small volume of Lyrical Bal- 
lads With a Few Other Poems. Of the twenty-three poems 
comprised in the little book the first was The Rime of the 
Ancyent Marinere, and the last was the Lines ivritten a feiv 
miles above Tinterii Abbey. The title page bore no author's 
name, the volume contained no hint of the poet's identity. 
The Lyrical Ballads, given to the public in this unpretend- 
ing fashion, were the work of two young men, the authors 
respectively of the first and the last poem of the collection; 
the two poets were Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William 
Wordsworth. 

The Rime which introduced the volume and tlie Lines 
which ended it were characteristic of the two men. The 
spiritual elevation and repose, the insight into " the life 
of things," the "sense sublime of something far more 
deeply interfused," these are the possession of Words- 
worth's special genius; and the lines in which this interpre- 
tation of nature and man finds expression are characteristic 
of Wordsworth's manner at its best: from this manner the 
entire body of his poetical work differs less in kind than in 
degree. For Tlie Ancient 3Iariner, on the other hand, it is 
not easy to find a single formula. The mystery of it, its 
magic, its reality in unreality, — ^like "Life-in-Death," — 
its suggestion of new worlds and other states of being, rather 
obscure than reveal the poet's mind and spirit. Words- 
worth's genius, incomprehensible and inexplicable as it is, is 
relatively simple, It is the one vision of the world-order, 



X INTRODUCTION 

a continuous pondering " on man, on nature, and on human 
life"; and the expression of this single reading of the uni- 
verse varies only in power and intensity. The genius of 
Coleridge is complex, enigmatical, chaotic, throwing off 
myriads of many-colored sparks, and at no time burning, 
like Wordsworth's, with the white and steady flame of 
invariable truth. Wordsworth is the seer, clear-eyed and 
penetrating; Coleridge is the dreamer of dreams. 

From his earliest years Coleridge had a hold on unreality 
as the highest, if not the only reality. Born in Devon, the 
"English Italy," in 1772, Coleridge inherited some of the 
characteristics of his father, the "kind, learned, simple 
hearted " vicar and schoolmaster of the parish.^ The 
son likened the vicar to Parson Adams in "learning, 
good-heartedness, absentness of mind, and excessive igno- 
rance of the world " ; and certain of these qualities early 
manifested themselves in the boy. The mother was practi- 
cal and unemotional, but happily gifted with sound sense. 
The second wife of the vicar, she was the mother of one 
daughter and nine sons, of whom the poet, Samuel Taylor, 
was the youngest. By his first wife the vicar was the father 
of three sons, one of whom had died in infancy. Despite 
this large family of brothers, Coleridge's boyhood was soli- 
tary, apart, unshared ; his brothers did not understand him 
and left him to his dreams and vagaries. So he was his 
own playfellow; and we know that he did not lack for inter- 
esting, if strange company. His was such a boyhood as we 
like to fancy is the boyhood of a poet. 

1 He published or rather attempted to pubhsh several works. Chief 
among them was a Latin Grammar in which he proposed an innova- 
tion in the names of the cases. " My father's new nomenclature was 
not likely to become popular, although it must be allowed to be both 
sonorous and expressive. Exempli gratia^ he calls the ablative the 
qiiippe-qiiare-qiiale-qida-qmdditive case!''' He used to quote Hebrew 
to his parishioners, as the " immediate language of the Holy Ghost." 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xi 

As tlie youngest of the family, "Sam," as he was called, 
was the favorite of his father and mother; their little special 
attentions aroused the ill-will of his brothers. "I was," 
he says, " in earliest childliood huffed away from the enjoy- 
ments of muscular activity in play, to take refuge at my 
Mother's side on my little stool, to read my little book, and 
to listen to the talk of my elders. I was driven from life 
in motion to life in thought and sensation. I never played 
except by myself, and then only acted over what I had been 
reading or fancying, or half one, half the other, with a 
stick cutting down weeds and nettles, as one of the Seven 
Champions of Christendom. ... I never thought as a 
child, never had the language of a child." Thus, instead 
of taking part in boyish sports, he "read incessantly," — a 
habit which stayed with him through life. At six years 
of age he had read, besides "all the gilt-cover little books 
that could be had at that time, and likewise all the uncov- 
ered tales of Tom Hickathrift, Jack the Giant-killer, etc.," 
Belisarius, Robinson Crusoe, Philip Quarles, and the Ara- 
bian Nights' Entertainments, one tale of which, he says, 
" made so deep an impression on me, that I was haunted by 
spectres, whenever I was in the dark." "So I became a 
dreamer, and acquired an indisposition to all bodily 
activity. . . . Sensibility, imagination, vanity, sloth, and 
feelings of deep and bitter contempt for all who traversed 
the orbit of my understanding, were even then prominent 
and manifest." 

What the child began to be from three to six, he con- 
tinued to be from six to nine. In this last year he was 
admitted to the grammar school, and soon outstripped all 
of his age. At this time he had a fever; nightly he said 
as a prayer the old rhyme beginning, "Matthew, Mark, 
Luke, and John." When his mother told him that a neigh- 
bor did not come to see him for fear of catching the fever, 
he answered, "Ah, Mamma! the four Angels round my bed 



xii INTRODUCTION 

an't afraid of catching it! " "Frequently have I," he says, 
" (half awake and half asleep, my body diseased and fevered 
by my imagination), seen armies of ugly things bursting in 
upon me, and these four angels keeping them off." Here 
are the brain and the imagination already active which 
struck off The Ancient Mariner. 

In the boyhood development of this "myriad-minded" 
man, the poet was early followed by the philosopher, — a 
sequence typical of his later experience. His father had 
resolved that the boy should be a parson. He used to take 
his son on his knee and hold long conversations with him. 
One winter evening, on a walk, he explained to the boy 
wonderful things about the stars. " I heard him with pro- 
found delight and admiration, but without the least mixture 
of wonder or incredulity. For from my earl}'' reading of 
fairy tales and genii, etc., etc., my mind had been habitu- 
ated to the Vast. ... I regulated all my creeds by my 
conceptions, not by my sight, even at that age." With 
Coleridge imagination and speculation went hand in 
hand. 

The father died when Coleridge was not quite nine years 
old. The following year a friend secured for the boy a 
Christ's Hospital presentation. Donning the blue coat and 
yellow stockings, Coleridge entered the school in September, 
1782. 

Of what Christ's Hospital was in the days of Coleridge, 
Lamb, and Leigh Hunt, these men have left us ample record.^ 
From them we learn what hardships were suffered by the 
orphan pensioners. The food was poor and insufficient; 
their appetites were " dampened, never satisfied ; " the dis- 
cipline was barbarousl}^ severe, and the mental training 
strenuous. For all that, the system was, in the upshot, 

1 Biog. Lit., Chap. I., Letter to Poole, February 19, 1798; Lamb, 
Chrisfs Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago, Becollections of Christ's 
Hospital ; Leigh Hunt, Autobiography, Chaps. III. and IV. 



7 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xiii 

salutary. " Thank Heaven ! " exclaims Coleridge, " I was 
flogged instead of being flattered. However, as I climbed 
up the school, my lot was somewhat alleviated." 

The school life of Coleridge was quite as extraordinary 
as his childhood. " From eight to fourteen I was a playless 
day dreamer . . . my whole being was, with eyes closed to 
every object of present sense, to crample myself up in a 
sunny corner and read, read, read." Although he was not 
ambitious, and did not know the meaning of emulation, 
his "talents and superiority" placed him at the head of his 
class. But the difference, he says, between him and his 
schoolfellows, in his lessons and exercises, bore no propor- 
tion to the " measureless difference " between him and them 
"in the wide, wild wilderness of useless unarranged book- 
knowledge and book -thoughts." He read through a circu- 
lating library from A to Z at the rate of two volumes a 
day.^ Besides the classic authors studied in the regular 
school course, not a small field to cover, he read Plato and 
Plotinus. He was seized with a rage for metaphysics, and 
he fancied himself an atheist. The desultory nature of his 
reading had its counterpart in his acts. In these school 
years there showed itself that uncertainty of purpose and 
that waywardness which characterized his later life, and 
made him the "man of magnificent b'eginnings." He was 
taken with a fancy to become a shoemaker. He made appli- 
cation for an apprenticeship, but was promptly brought to 
his senses by the clear-headed, if unsympathetic master, 

1 His accesig to the circulating Ubrary Coleridge owed to an amusing 
incident. Walking along the crowded Strand one day he was lost, as 
usual, in his own fancies. This time it was Leander swimming the 
Hellespont, whose part he was acting out in imagination, and he was 
thrusting out his arms, as if swimming. His hand struck a stranger's 
pocket. The boy was seized as a pickpocket. His explanation, how- 
ever, so extraordinary and yet so manifestly sincere, delighted the 
gentleman with its novelty, and he paid a subscription to a circulating 
library for the benefit of the Bluecoat boy. 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

Boyer.^ Soon afterward Coleridge's brother Luke, who was 
studying surgery, came to London to work in the- hospi- 
tals. A passion for medicine took hold upon the Bluecoat 
boy : he read all the medical and surgical books he could lay 
hands on; and on holiday afternoons he visited the hos- 
pitals with his brother, happy if he was permitted even to 
hold a plaster. Among the vagaries of his school days we 
must count, also, his first love affair. This preoccupation 
held him for a longer time than most of his youthful 
caprices. His passion for the sister of a schoolmate he 
carried with him to the university. 

But in these years what of the poet? He was, for a 
schoolboy of his age, he says, " above par in English versi- 
fication, — and had already produced two or three composi- 
tions which . . . were above mediocrity." But for a time 
poetry yielded to metaphysics. Before his fifteenth year 
he had bewildered himself in metaphysics and theological 
controversy ; poetry, and even novels and romances, became 
insipid to him. From the pursuit of metaphysics, however, 
he was " auspiciously withdrawn, partly, indeed, by an acci- 
dental introduction to an amiable family, ^ chiefly, however, 
by the genial influence of a style of poetry so tender and 
yet so manly, so natural and real, and yet so dignified and 
harmonious, as the sonnets and other early poems of Mr. 
Bowles." The poems written under these new influences 
during the last years at school — a period which Coleridge 
characterized as "the era of poetry and love" — are the 

1 The Rev, James Boyer is represented by Coleridge as the incar- 
nation of pedagogic tyranny, but he adds, " He sent us to the Univer- 
sity excellent Latin and Greek scholars and tolerable Hebraists, yet 
our classical knowledge was the least of the good gifts which we 
derived from his zealous and conscientious tutorage." — Bioci. Lit., 
Chap. I. 

2 The Evanses. It was with the eldest daughter, Mary, that he fell 
in love. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XV 

Avork of a clever young versifier; they contain little hint of 
what was to come. It is less in his poetry than in the 
development of his mind and special faculties, Avhich we 
have traced here at some length, that we find foreshadowed 
the Coleridge who wrote The Ancient Mariner. 

From Christ's Hospital Coleridge went to Cambridge; 
when he entered at Jesus College he was just eighteen. 
For the first year or two he seems to have studied hard.^ 
At the same time that he distinguished himself for scholar- 
ship, he gathered about himself a circle of friends, who were 
attracted by his singular powers of conversation. At th^^^ 
end of two years, Coleridge suddenly, for reasons which are 
not clear, ^ left the university. He enlisted as a dragoon, 
under the name of Silas Tomkyn Comberback, preserving 
thus his initials. One can imagine what garrison life must 
have been for this "logician, metaphysician, bard," who 
had a horror of horses, and could not even clean his 
accoutrements. However, he made himself useful, at least 
to his comrades, by nursing them when they were sick, and 
writing their letters. Indeed, it was his literary acomplish- 
ments, it is said, which led to the discovery of his identity. 
A Latin inscription he had scratched on the stable wall was 
seen by his captain. An inquiry followed; and, with the 
help of the captain and of a brother, Captain James Cole- 
ridge, the Latin-writing trooper obtained his discharge and 
returned to Cambridge. 

But not for long. In less than two months he started 
with a friend for a walking trip in Wales. On his way, he 
stayed several weeks in Oxford; and here it was that he 
met Southey, then an undergraduate, the author of Joan of 

1 He won the Browne Gold Medal for a Greek Ode on the Slave 
Trade, and he was selected as one of four out of seventeen or eighteen 
to compete for the Craven Scholarship. 

2 Probably debts and disappointed love. He had now broken with 
Miss Evans. 



XVI INTRODUCTION 

Arc, and, like Coleridge, a lover of liberty. On his return 
from Wales, Coleridge joined Sontliey in Bristol. The two 
young poets and free-thinkers, with a few friends, devised 
the plan of founding, on the banks of the Susquehanna, in 
far America, an ideal community. Property was to be held 
in common. It was supposed that two or three hours a day 
of labor would be sufficient to support the colony; the 
remaining time was to be devoted to study and discussion. 
Each member was to enjoy perfect liberty in his religious 
and political opinions. Such was the scheme of "Panti- 
socracy." But, however ideal in aim, it needed material 
support. Money was not to be had, nor were the two 
enthusiasts able to earn sufficient, though they wrote poetry 
together,^ and each tried lecturing. In the face of diffi- 
culties too great to be met, it is not surprising that their 
enthusiasm cooled, and the scheme was abandoned. 

Significant as is the plan of Pantisocracy, as illustrating 
the bent of Coleridge's mind and his impractical nature, it 
was not the most important consequence of the meeting of 
Coleridge with Southey. To this meeting he owed his 
acquaintance with the woman who became his wife. One 
of the Pantisocratic friends, Robert Lovell, was married to 
a Miss Pricker, of Bristol; to her sister Edith, Southey was 
engaged. Coleridge was presented to the circle ; and soon 
he engaged himself to another sister, Sarah Pricker, — per- 
haps to "complete the set." In October of the following 
year (1795) he was married at Bristol in " Chatterton's 
Church." 

Coleridge had left the university the year before with- 
out taking his degree, refusing the required subscription 
to the Thirty-nine Articles. With his bride he now 
settled in a little cottage in the country; and here he 
spent several happy months. But life could not be all 

1 The Fall of Bohespierre. Of this Coleridge wrote the first act, 
Southey the second and third. The piece found no publisher. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xvii 

dreams and poetry, even for Coleridge. Bills had to 
be paid, and lie had nothing. For the moment he 
laid aside his poetry and turned to a new venture, which 
seemed to promise a more immediate and concrete return. 
With a party of friends he proposed to bring out a weekly 
political miscellany, half review, half newspaper, to be 
called The Watchman. With his usual perversity in mat- 
ters practical, he arranged to issue the paper every eighth 
day. This plan had for its purpose to avoid the stamp tax, 
but in the result, as the paper appeared on a different day 
each week, the arrangement proved to be "as ingeniously 
calculated to irritate and alienate its public, as any perhaps 
that the wit of man could have devised." ^ The canvass he 
took charge of in person. He set out on a tour through the 
North country, " preaching by the way in most of the great 
towns, as a hireless volunteer, in a blue coat and white 
waistcoat, that not a rag of the woman of Babylon might be 
seen on me." After many amusing adventures, character- 
istic of the man, he returned with nearly a thousand sub- 
scribers enrolled on his list.^ In spite of this encouraging 
start, the paper worried through a troublous and brief ex- 
istence, and expired with the tenth number from lack 
of support. 

During the issue of The Watchman, Coleridge had pub- 
lished a volume of Poems on Various Subjects, which was, 
on the whole, favorably received by the critics. After the 
failure of his paper, he attempted many things, teaching, 
lecturing, writing for the newspaper, each venture proving 
fruitless. The birth of a son added to his responsibilities. 
It was a time of extreme worry and depression.^ "Exce-s- 

1 Traill, Coleridge, p. 29. 

2 For Coleridge's account of it, see Biog. Lit., Chap. X. 

3 Coleridge wrote in January, 1796 : " My past lite seems to me like 
a dream, a feverish dream — all one gloomy huddle of strange acti.*'^" 
and dim-discovered motives; friendships lost by indolence, and hap- 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

sive anxiety " brought on a severe attack of neuralgia, to 
which his system was peculiarly susceptible.^ For relief 
he resorted to laudanum. With from sixty to seventy 
drops he " sopped the Cerberus " ; and this he followed 
with "25 drops every live hours." Here is recorded the 
beginning of a practice which was to become a fixed and 
terrible habit, — a habit from which he never freed himself 
entirely. To have done with the matter once for all, we 
may say here that without doubt Coleridge's use of opium 
affected his powers fundamentally. At the same time that 
it weakened his will, it stimulated his imagination; and to 
it may be due some of his inspiration in such poems as The 
Ancient Mariner, Kuhla Khan, and Christabel. Obviously, 
we cannot measure its precise effects. We know only that 
before these poems were written Coleridge had begun the 
use of opium; it is sufficient here simply to record the fact. 
Speculation in the matter or any attempt to determine 
causes and results seems to be wholly idle. 

After months of struggle and indecision, new efforts and 
new failures, Coleridge was enabled, by the help of a few 
friends, to find shelter and a home in Nether Stowey, 
Somersetshire. In itself, the incident seems commonplace, 

piness murdered by mismanaged seiisibiUty." And in November, 
1796 : " With a gloomy wantonness of imagination I liad been coquet- 
ting with the hideous x>ossihles of disappointment. I drank fears hke 
wormwood, yea, made myself drunken with bitterness ; for my 
ever-shaping and distrustful mind still mingled gall-drops, till out of 
the cup of hope I almost poiso wed myself with despair." 

1 As a child Coleridge had run away from home to escape punish- 
ment, and had spent the night on the edge of a river. A storm came 
on ; the boy awoke the next morning wet and cold and so stiff that he 
couIq not move. He was found and carried home ; and although he 
escap 3d serious consequences, this adventure left him subject to ague 
for years. At school, too, he had swiim across a river in his clothes ; 
t' 'je he neglected to change ; the result was a rheumatic fever, from 
^\. lich he suffered acutely. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xix 

but its consequences were immense. For it was here 
that Coleridge was brought into intimate association with 
Wordsworth; and from their association resulted The 
Ancient Mariner, the Lyrical Ballads, and a revolution in 
English literature. As it is the moment supremely signifi- 
cant in the development of Coleridge as the writer of 
Tlie Ancient Mariner, the episode deserves a chapter by 
itself. To complete here the biographical sketch we may 
review very briefly Coleridge's life after the publication 
of The Ancient Mariner in the little volume of Lyrical 
Ballads. 

Shortly after the Lyrical Ballads appeared, Coleridge, in 
company with Wordsworth and his sister, 3et sail for Ger- 
many. Here a year*of eager study initiated him into 
the deep secrets of German thought, and brought him to a 
peculiarly penetrating and appreciative apprehension of the 
genius of the German people. He returned to England 
less of a poet, but a great critic and a trained philosopher. 
His poetical production after his return, though considerable 
in amount, is, for the most part, without distinction. It 
has none of the witchery of mood and surpassing felicity 
of phrase and rhythm which mark the work of his " poetic 
prime." From now on all his efforts, at best only intermit- 
tent and inconclusive, were directed to journalism, to lec- 
tures on literature, and to philosophical speculation. In 
the articles which he wrote for the Morning Post, soon after 
his return from Germany, he developed, according to Mr. 
Traill, the qualities of a first-rate journalist. His news- 
paper work presented the opportunity of a permanent 
way of life ; for the publisher offered him half shares 
in the Morning Post and the Courier — an equivalent of 
two thousand pounds a year — if he would devote himself 
to the two papers. Coleridge's reply was characteristic: 
" I told him that I would not give up the country and 
the lazy reading of old folios for two thousand times 



XX INTRODUCTION 

two thousand poand — in short that beyond 3501. a year 
I considered money as a real evil." ^ From journalism 
he turned to lecturing. In his lectures on literature, on 
Shakespeare and Milton, he showed himself to be a great 
philosophic critic. The lectures were marked by his ex- 
traordinary brilliance, and his usual waywardness and irre- 
sponsibility. Often he kept his audience waiting, and 
sometimes he did not appear at all. On the other hand, 
once he was well under way, he carried his audience, in 
spite of digressions, into undreamed-of regions of eloquence 
and poetry. " Coleridge's audiences probably heard the 
finest literary criticism which has ever been given in 
English." 2 

Yet for all these bursts of energy, flashings of the old- 
time fire, the story of these years is dreary indeed. It is 
the record of ever new struggles and certain defeat. Effort 
had for outcome only " Fears self-willed, that shunned the 
eye of hope; and hope that scarce would know itself from 
fear." His life was ma.rked by a continual flow and ebb, 
an assertion of will, a renewal of effort, to be followed by 
the inevitable collapse and predestined frustration. Cole- 
ridge's nature was one such as is bound to prove ever ineffi- 
cient; for his genius lacked the necessary reenforcement 
of a dominant personality: life and all its strivings left 
him only a — 

" Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain 
And genius given, and knowledge won in vain." 

The steady, inexorable enfeebling of his will was a part 
of the general breakdown of his powers. His health failed, 
and therewith the practice of taking opium became fixed 
upon him as a habit. A stay in Malta of two years and a 
journey through Italy brought him no relief. Eeturned to 

1 Essays on his Own Times, I, p. xci. 

2 Campbell, Memoir, Ixxxiv. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XXI 

England, he had no abiding place. He had separated from 
his wife and family, and he roamed about the country, find- 
ing a home with this friend and that, dependent on their 
hospitality and bounty. At last, rallying his forces, he 
determined to make a final heroic stand against opium. 
A home was found for him with Mr. Gillman, at Highgate, 
near London. Here he settled in 1816, and here he spent 
the eighteen years of life that remained to him. 

These closing years were a time of comparative peace. 
Grappling with his old enemy, he succeeded in freeing 
himself, in a measure, from the wasting tyranny of opium. 
He accomplished an amount of literary work, republishing 
some of his earlier productions, and writing his Literary 
Life.^ But most especially he gave himself over to philoso- 
phy. Here at Mr. Gillman's he gathered about himself 
a company of listeners and disciples, attracted by his 
marvellous powers of talk. With them he had, according 
to one of his visitors, Thomas Carlyle, "a higher than lit- 
erary, a kind of prophetic or magician character." Through 
these young men he exerted his great influence upon religious 
thought in England. 

It was here in his Highgate home that Coleridge died on 
July 25, 1834. It remains now to consider very briefly 
what he accomplished. 

Of the work of Coleridge as a poet I shall not now 
attempt to speak; in studying The Ancient Mariner wq shall 
have "a taste of his quality." Even with his poetry set 
aside, Coleridge's influence on English literature and 
thought is difficult to measure. To him our nineteenth- 
century schools of philosophic and appreciative criticism, as 
opposed to the dogmatism of the critics of the reviews, owe 
their inception and their method. In philosophy Coleridge 
transplanted into England the metaphysics of Kant and of 

1 Biographia Literaria, or Biographical Sketches of my Literary 
Life and Opinio ns^ 1817. 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

the German Romantic school.^ If Coleridge himself left 
no philosophic system, these German thinkers whom he 
introduced to Englishmen influenced profoundly the men 
who followed him. Through philosophy, Coleridge found 
his way back to religion. In the closing years at High- 
gate he gathered about himself as disciples men like 
Maurice, Sterling, Hare, who became leaders of English 
religious thought. 

Obviously, a life like Coleridge's cannot be summed 
up in a single formula. In spite of weakness and failure, 
disease of body and of will, he wrought mightily, if only 
by what he communicated of inspiration. Even if we set 
apart his influence on life and thought in England, surely 
it is little enough to say that English literature is incal- 
culably richer than if Coleridge had not lived. To his 
inestimable " magnificent beginnings " he adds at least one 
thing perfect, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 

11. PEN PORTRAITS BY CONTEMPORARIES 

That Coleridge may be a personality for us and not 
merely a life, let us see him "in his habit as he lived." 
We have only to turn to the writings of certain of his 
friends to find him vividly portrayed. 

Let us see him first as a Bluecoat boy; here the artist is 
iiis schoolfellow, Charles Lamb. 

" Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the day- 
spring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column before 
thee — the dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel Taylor 
Coleridge — Logician, Metaphysician, Bard! — How have 
I seen the casual passer through the Cloisters stand still, 
entranced with admiration (while he weighed the dispro- 
portion between the speech and the garb of the young 
Mirandula), to hear tliee unfold, in thy deep and sweet 

1 Notably Ficlite and Schelling, and in criticism Sclilegel. 



PEN PORTRAITS BY CONTEMPORARIES xxill 

intonations, the mysteries of Jamblichus, or Plotinus (for 
even in those years thou waxedst not pale at such philo- 
sophic draughts), or reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pin- 
dar — while the walls of the old Grey Friars reechoed to 
the accents of the inspired charity-hoy ! ^^ ^ 

In startling contrast with Lamb's idealized portrait is 
Coleridge's own picture of himself as a young man of 
twenty-four. "My face, unless when animated by im- 
mediate eloquence, expresses great sloth, and great, indeed, 
almost idiotic, good-nature. 'Tis a mere carcass of a face; 
fat, flabby, and expressive chiefly of inexpression. Yet I 
am told that my eyes, eyebrows, and forehead are physiog- 
nomically good. ... As to my shape, 'tis a good shape 
enough if measured, but my gait is awkward, and the walk 
of the whole man indicates indolence capable of energies. 
... I cannot breathe through my nose, so my mouth, with 
sensual, thick lips, is almost always open."^ 

This we may correct, in some measure, by the description 
of him in a letter of Dorothy Wordsworth's. " He is a won- 
derful man. His conversation teems with soul, mind, and 
spirit. ... At first I thought him very plain, that is, for 
about three minutes. He is pale, thin, has a wide mouth, 
thick lips, and not very good teeth, longish, loose-growing, 
half-curling, rough, black hair. But if you hear him speak 
for five minutes you think no more of them. His eye is 
large and full, and not very dark, but grey, such an eye as 
would receive from a heavy soul the dullest expression ; but 
it speaks every emotion of his animated mind : it has more 
of 'the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling' than I have ever 
witnessed. He has fine dark eyebrows, and an overhanging 
forehead." 

Wordsworth has pictured him as — 

1 Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago. 

2 Letter to ThelwaU, 19 November, 179G. 



XXIV INTRODUCTION 

" A noticeable Man with large grey eyes, 
And a pale face that seemed undoubtedly 
As if a blooming face it ought to be ; 
Heavy his low-hung lip did oft appear, 
Deprest by weight of musing Phantasy ; 
Profound his forehead was, though not severe ; 
Yet some did think that he had little business here." i 

Another interesting portrait of Coleridge at this time is 
that drawn by Hazlitt : ^ " His forehead was broad and high, 
light as if built of ivory, with large projecting eyebrows, 
and his eyes rolling beneath them, like a sea with darkened 
lustre. 'A certain tender bloom his face o'erspread, ' a 
purple tinge as we see it in the pale thoughtful complexions 
of the Spanish portrait-painters, Murillo and Velasquez. 
His mouth was gross, voluptuous, open, eloquent; his chin 
good-humoured and round; but his nose, the rudder of the 
face, the index of the will, was small, feeble, nothing — 
like what he has done. It might seem that the genius of his 
face as from a height surveyed and projected him (with 
sufficient capacity and huge aspiration) into the world 
unknown of thought and imagination, with nothing to sup- 
port or guide his veering purpose, as if Columbus had 
launched his adventurous course for the New World in a 
scallop, without oars or compass. So, at least, I comment 
on it after the event. Coleridge in his person was rather 
above the common size, inclining to the corpulent, or like 
Lord Hamlet, 'somewhat fat and pursy.' His hair (now, 
alas! grey) was then black and glossy as the raven's, and 
fell in smooth masses over his forehead." 

His portrait was painted by Washington Allston, who 
said of him that "his countenance, in his high, poetic mood, 
was quite beyond the painter's art, 'it was indeed spirit 
made visible.^ " Of this portrait Coleridge said, "I am not 

1 Stanzas in Pocket Copy of Thomson'' s " Castle of Indolence,'''' 

2 My First Acquaintance with Poets, 



PEN PORTRAITS BY CONTEMPORARIES XXV 

mortified, though I own I should like it better to be other- 
wise, that my face is not a manly or representable face. 
Whatever is impressive is part fugitive, part existent only 
in the imagination of persons impressed strongly by my 
conversation. The face itself is a feeble, unmanly face. 
The exceeding weakness, strengthlessness in my face, was 
even painful to me." ^ 

For a final portrait of Coleridge as he was in his later 
years, we must turn to one of his visitors at Mr. Gillman's, 
— Thomas Carlyle. We must remember that Carlyle 
listened to Coleridge only to be repelled by him, and that 
it is not a disciple and reverent biographer who is writing, 
but a literary artist, as irresponsible toward fact as he is 
trenchant in his portraiture. His object here is not truth, 
but effect. 

"Coleridge sat on the brow of Highgate Hill, in those 
years, looking down on London and its smoke-tumult, like 
a sage escaped from the inanity of life's battle; attracting 
towards him the thoughts of innumerable brave souls still 
engaged there. His express contributions to poetry, philoso- 
phy, or any specific province of human literature or enlight- 
enment, had been small and sadly intermittent; but he had, 
especially among young, inquiring men a higher than lit- 
erary, a kind of prophetic or magician character. . . . The 
practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, or 
carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer : but to the 
rising spirits of the young generation he had this dusky 
sublime character ; and sat there as a kind of Magus, girt in 
mystery and enigma; his Dodona oak grove (Mr. Gillman's 
house at Highgate) whispering strange things, uncertain 
whether oracles or jargon. . . . 

"The good man, he was now getting old, toward sixty 
perhaps; and gave you the idea of a life that had been full 

^ Letter, August 0, 1814. Rossetti, Lives of Famous Poets, p. 252. 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

of sufferings; a life heavy-laden, half -vanquished, still 
swimming painfully in seas of manifold physical and other 
bewilderment. Brow and head were round, and of massive 
weight, but the face was flabby and irresolute. The deep 
eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as of inspira- 
tion; confused pain looked mildly fron) them, as in a kind 
of mild astonishment. The whole figure and air, good and 
amiable otherwise, might be called flabby and irresolute; 
expressive of weakness under possibility of strength. He 
hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent, and stooping 
attitude; in walking, he rather shuffled than decisively 
stept;- and a lady once remarked, he never could fix which 
side of the garden walk would suit him best, but continually 
shifted, in corkscrew fashion, and kept trying both. A 
heavy-laden, high-aspiring, and surely much-snffering 
"man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had contracted 
itself into a plaintive snuffle and singsong; he spoke as if 
preaching, — you would have said, preaching earnestly and 
also hopelessly the weightiest things. I still recollect his 
'object' and 'subject,' terms of continual recurrence in the 
Kantean province; and how he sang and snuffled them into 
'om-m-mject' and 'sum-m-mject,' with a kind of solemn 
shake or quaver, as he rolled along. No talk, in his 
century or in any other, could be more surprising. . . . 

"To the man himself nature had given, in high measure, 
the seeds of a noble endowment; and to unfold it had been 
forbidden him. A subtle lynx-eyed intellect, tremulous, 
pious sensibility to all good and all beautiful; truly, a ray 
of empyrean light ; — but embedded in such weak laxity of 
character, in such indolences and esuriences as had made 
strange work with it. Once more, the tragic story of a high 
endowment with an insufficient will."^ 

1 Life of Sterling, Part I., Chap. VIII. Compare what Carlyle 
wrote to his brother in 1824. " I have seen many curiosities ; not the 
least of them I reckon Coleridge. . . . Figure a fat, flabby, incurvated 



THE COMPOSITION OF THE POEM XXVll 

III. THE COMPOSITION OF THE POEM 

In the curiously multiform experience of Coleridge, tlie 
flowering time of his poetic genius is limited to a single 
brief period. This period students of his poetry find it 
possible to detach from the circumstances of his life, and 
they are able to consider it apart, as constituting a kind of 
distinct and special epoch. It was his annus mirabilis, his 
''poetic prime"; it was the period which produced The 
Ancient Mariner. And it was, also, the period of Cole- 
ridge's association with Wordsworth. 

During the last year of his residence at Cambridge, where 
Wordsworth had taken his degree two years before Coleridge 
entered, the younger poet had recognized in the Descriptive 
Sketches, with its "words and images all aglow," and in 
spite of all its defects and unevenness, a poem of excep- 
tional power and import. "Seldom, if ever," he wrote, 
" was the emergence of an original poetic genius above 
the literary horizon more evidently announced." In his 
twenty-fourth year, he met Wordsworth personally.^ To 
Coleridge's removal to Nether Stowey in 1796, however, 
was due that intimacy and communion which proved in the 
result so immensely significant. At that time Wordsworth 
was living, with his sister Dorothy, at Kacedown, some 
thirty miles from Nether Stowey. Here, in June, 1797, 
Coleridge paid the Wordsworths a visit. '" The first thing 

personage, at once short, rotund, and relaxed, with a watery mouth, a 
snuffy nose, a pair of strange brown, timid, yet earnest-looking eyes, 
a high tapering brow, and a great bush of grey hair ; and you have 
some faint idea of Coleridge. He is a kind good soul, full of religion 
and affection and poetry and animal magnetism. His cardinal sin is 
that he wants iinll.''' — Thomas Carlyle., 1795-1835, by J. A. Froude, 
Volume I., p. 179. 

1 Biog. Lit., Chap. I. Professor Legouis gives the "exact date" 
as between September and the 14th of November, 1795, Professor 
Knight says it was in the early spring of 1796. 



XXviii INTRODUCTION 

that was read after lie came," wrote Miss Wordsworth, 
"was William's new poem, The Ruined Cottage, with which 
li€ was much delighted; and after tea he repeated to ns 
two acts and a half of his tragedy, Osorio. The next morn- 
ing William read his tragedy, The Borderers.^^ The two 
yoLing men were not long in discovering how much they had 
in common. 

The Wordsworths returned Coleridge's visit the following 
month, staying with him a fortnight. They were so 
delighted with the neighborhood of Stowey, that they 
removed from Eacedown and settled at Alfoxden, only 
three miles distant from Stowey. Their principal induce- 
ment, according to Dorothy, was Coleridge's society. 

Two men more widely different in temperament than the 
austere, simple, Northern poet of the mountains and of 
humble life, and the Southern dreamer of strange dreams, 
it is difficult to conceive; yet their intercourse at this period, 
as shortly afterward their association in the composition of 
the Lyrical Ballads, has in it something wholly logical, if 
not inevitable. Coleridge had been attracted to Words- 
worth when he had known him only through his poetry. 
From the very beginning of their acquaintance, the two 
young poets felt themselves powerfully drawn to each other. 
Wordsworth acknowledged the fascination the younger man 
exercised upon him in removing to Alfoxden to enjoy his 
society. Speaking of Coleridge, a few days after his death, 
he "called him the most loonderful man that he had ever 
known." ^ Coleridge, in his turn, was equally enthusiastic 
and more expressive. He wrote to a friend, " I speak with 
heartfelt sincerity and, I think, unblinded judgment, when 
I tell you that I feel a little man by his side." Again, 
" The Giant Wordsworth — God love him ! when I speak in 
the terms of admiration due to his intellect, I fear lest these 

A Prose Works, Ed. Grossart, III. 469. 



THE COMPOSITION OF THE POEM xxix 

terms should keep out of sight the amiableness of his man- 
ners. He has written near twelve hundred lines of blank 
verse, superior, I hesitate not to aver, to anything in our 
language which anyway resembles it." And ten years later 
he said of Wordsworth, *'He is one, whom God knows, I 
love and honour as far beyond myself, as both morally and 
intellectually he is above me." When two men like 
Wordsworth and Coleridge meet on terms of such thorough- 
going mutual esteem, friendship becomes inevitable.^ 

And their association, as I have said, was wholly logical. 
For by reason of their very difference of character and 
temperament, they supplemented and reenforced each other. 
Wordsworth was upright, tenacious, uncompromising; sen- 
sitive to the "power of the hills," he had something of the 
elevation and isolation of a mountain peak. Contrasted 
with Wordsworth's splendid poise is Coleridge's greater 
flexibility ; he was more supple, more brilliant, more versa- 
tile ; a man of emotional extremes, infirm of purpose, and 
weak-willed.^ This last trait he was wholly unable to 
struggle against successfully; and its existence he frankly 
recognized. "Indeed, I want firmness," he exclaims in a 
letter; "I perceive I do." Long before he had measured 
himself with Wordsworth, he wrote : - — 

1 For Wordsworth's account of their association see Stanzas 
Written in my Pocket Copy of Thomson'' s '■'■Castle of Indolence.''^ 

2 Hazlitt says: "I observed that he continually crossed me on the 
way by shifting from one side of the footpath to the other. This 
struck me as an odd movement ; but I did not at that time connect it 
with any instability of purpose or involuntary change of principle, as 
I have done since. Ke seemed unable to keep on in a straight line." 
Again: "Coleridge has told me that he himself liked to compose 
in walking over uneven ground, or breaking through the straggling 
branches of a copse-wood ; whereas Wordsworth always wrote (if 
he could) walking up and down a straight gravel walk, or in some 
spot where the continuity of his verse met with no collateral inter- 
ruption." 



XXX INTRODUCTION 

" To me hath Heaven with bounteous hand assigned 
Energic Reason and a shaping mind, 
The daring ken of Truth, the Patriot's part, , 

And Pity's sigh, that breathes the gentle heart • — * 

Sloth-jaundiced all ! and from my graspless hand 
Drop Friendship's precious pearls, like hour-glass sand. 
I weep, yet stoop not ! the faint anguish flows, 
A dreamy pang in Morning's feverish doze." 

On sucli a nature the influence of Wordsworth's sustained 
calm was tonic and energizing. 

During this year among the Quantock hills the two poets 
were much together. They read their verses to each other; 
they talked about poetry. Their discussions turned fre- 
quently upon poetry in two aspects. Poetry may, in its first 
aspect, appeal to the sympathy of the reader by keeping 
close to the truth of nature, by presenting a faithful tran- 
script of the world as we know it. To such an appeal — 
and this is the second aspect — may be added the interest 
of novelty, — a novelty evoked by seeing things through 
the modifying colors of the imagination. So it is not 
altogether the actual world of immediate and concrete fact, 
the world we see and touch, which may furnish the stuff of 
poetry; but rather a world transformed by the shaping 
power of the imagination. Por just as a known and 
familiar landscape may gain a sudden charm when, in 
the moonlight or at sunset, its contours are modified by 
the accidents of light and shade, so the world as we know 
it day by day, when seen imaginatively, may take on fresh 
beauty, may express a deeper significance. Here, then, is 
the domain of poetry, where the familiar and the novel 
meet and fuse to result in a higher reality. This higher 
reality both Wordsworth and Coleridge propose to embody 
in their poetry; this common ground they are ultimately 
to reach. Yet they start from points diametrically oppo- 
site. Wordsworth is to choose his subjects from ordinary 



THE COMPOSITION OF THE POEM XXXI 

life. Seeing imaginatively these familiar and unadorned 
characters and incidents, reading deep into their inner 
meaning, he draws from them new significance. By this 
penetrative power he gives to the truth of nature the 
charm of novelty. He pierces the film of familiarity, 
rouses men from the lethargy of custom, and quickens 
them to perceive the loveliness and the wonders of the world 
about them. Thus, with the things of everyday life as his 
point of departure, he excites a feeling analogous to the 
supernatural. With Coleridge, on the other hand, the 
supernatural is the starting-point; in the world which he 
is to call up for us the incidents and actors are unreal. Yet 
just as in Wordsworth's world of natural truth we spiritu- 
alize common things and find in them new and immaterial 
powers and import, so here these supernatural incidents and 
actors which Coleridge conjures up we are, by the exercise 
of our "poetic faith," to consider real. Suspending all 
disbelief for the moment, we must transfer from our inward 
nature to " these shadows of imagination " a human interest 
and a semblance of truth. Or, in simpler terms : the poet is 
able, by the exercise of imagination and the magic of verse, 
to call up a scene and to people it with beings who act. All 
this we knoiD to be unreal as we knoio a stage-play to be 
unreal; but the poem or the play appeals, not to our intel- 
lects, but to our imagination. We lay aside what we know, 
and yield to what we see and feel. The imagination, 
although acting apart from practical life, has a reality of its 
own. So it is that the poet transports us to a different order 
of existence, which, for the moment, seems real ; just as in 
sleep we do not question the actuality of dreams. It was 
with these principles in mind that Coleridge set about the 
composition of The Ancient Mariner} 

Not all the hours, however, which Coleridge and Words- 

1 For Coleridge's account of the matter, see Appendix A. 



XXXll INTRODUCTION 

worth spent together were given over to discussion. At the 
same time that they debated theories and principles, they 
came very close to nature. They lived much out of doors; 
they took long rambles among the hills. One autumn 
afternoon the two poets, with Dorothy Wordsworth, started 
from Alfoxden on a walking trip, to be gone several days. 
They had not much money : and to meet the expenses of the 
excursion the friends agreed to write a poem, to be sent to 
the New Monthly Magazine. In the course of the walk they 
planned their poem. The starting-point was suggested by 
Coleridge. A friend of his had had a strange dream, in 
which he fancied that he saw a skeleton ship with figures 
in it. This situation Coleridge elaborated by force of his 
own invention. Wordsworth, as his share in the work, 
suggested that some crime be committed, which should bring 
upon the Mariner the spectral persecution, as a consequence 
of that crime and his own wanderings. Only a day or two 
before, Wordsworth had been reading an old book of travel 
in which the author recounted that while doubling Cape 
Horn,' they frequently saw albatrosses, — huge sea-birds, 
with wings twelve or thirteen feet in extent. Wordsworth 
proposed, accordingly, that the Mariner should be repre- 
sented as having killed one of these birds, on entering the 
South Seas, and that the protecting spirits of these regions 
should be made to avenge the crime. He further suggested 
that the ship be navigated by dead men. The same even- 
ing, then, the friends began the composition. Words- 
worth furnished a few lines ;^ but the collaborators had 
not gone far, before they discovered that their respective 



And thou art long, and lank, and brown, 
As is the ribbed sea-sand." 

He holds him with his glittering eye, — 
The wedding guest stood still, 
And listens like a three years child, 
The Mariner hath his will." 



THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE POEM xxxiii 

manners were widely different. Accordingly, Wordsworth 
withdrew, leaving Coleridge to complete the poem alone. ^ 
Under his touch The Anciejit Mariner took shape, until it 
became too important for their immediate object, which 
was limited, Wordsworth tells us, to five pounds. Instead, 
they began to plan a volume, which was to consist of poems 
chiefly on supernatural subjects. This volume was the 
Lyrical Ballads, in which the first poem was The Ancient 
Mariner ^ 

IV. THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE POEM 

Such is substantially the genesis of The Ancient Mariner, 
as recounted by Wordsworth and by Coleridge. Stated 
here, however, are only the external circumstances of its 
composition and its more material components. In its 

1 It is interesting to note that the collaboration on The Ancient 
Mariner was not the first attempt of the two young poets to compose 
together. In the prefatory note to the Wanderings of Cain, Cole- 
ridge says: "The work was to have been written in concert with 
another [Wordsworth], whose name is too venerable within the 
precincts of genius to be unnecessarily brought into connection with 
such a trifle, and who was then residing at a small distance from 
Nether Stowey. The title and subject were suggested by myself, who 
likewise drew out the scheme and the contents for each of the three 
books, or cantos, of which the work was to consist, and which, the 
reader is to be informed, was to have been finished in one night ! My 
partner undertook the first canto : I the second : and whichever had 
done first was to set about the third. . . . Methinks I see his grand 
and noble countenance, as at the moment when having despatched 
my own portion of the task at full finger-speed, I hastened to him 
with my manuscript — that look of humorous despondency fixed on his 
almost blank sheet of paper, and then its silent, mock piteous admis- 
sion of failure, struggling with the sense of the exceeding ridiculous- 
ness of the whole scheme — which broke up in a laugh : and the 
Ancient Mariner was written instead." 

■^ For Wordsworth's account of the composition of The Ancient 
Mariner, see Appendix A. 



XXXIV INTRODUCTION 

essence, the poem combines elements more subtle and less 
immediate than are here set down, — elements brought from 
afar. For the poem is the expression of Coleridge's special 
habit of mind, temperament, genius ; and, further, it gathers 
up into itself certain tendencies and forces active in the 
national life of the time. 

All literature, we must remember, is the expression of 
the thought and feeling, not only of an individual, but of 
a people and of an age. N"o error is more easy for those 
who are beginning the study of literature, or more fatal to 
a just understanding of what literature is, than the tendency 
to regard a given novel, or essay, or poem, the work of a 
man in any department, as merely an isolated phenomenon, 
wholly detached and unrelated. The Ancient Mariner, by 
way of example, is not a total and immediate creation, 
sprung full-formed from the poet's brain; it is rather the 
crystallization — under the workings of the poet's trans- 
figuring imagination and formative power of utterance — 
of elements already existing and held in solution. It unites 
in itself strivings, motives, tendencies, operative in the 
national life. These components we can in some measure 
trace in the finished product. But the process of trans- 
mutation itself baffles us. Hoio the poet takes these ele- 
ments into himself and gives them out something new, 
original, divine, we do not know. There is a point beyond 
which our analysis cannot go. Recognizing, then, this 
limitation, and, accordingly, not seeking to do too much, 
we find an examination into these elements, the material 
itself of the poem, useful and illuminating. 

We have seen what concrete incidents went into the com- 
position of The Ancient Mariner. The more general ten- 
dencies and forces at work in the age we can here only 
suggest without hoping to define comprehensively. Pub- 
lished in 1798, the Lyrical Ballads fall within the limits of 
the eighteenth century. These poems, then, are the product 



THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE TOEM XXXV 

of an age which Matthew Arnokl has characterized as pre- 
eminently an age of prose and reason. Yet what coukl be 
less prosaic, what could concern itself less with reason, than 
Tlie Rime of the Ancient Mariner? Indeed, t\ie Lyrical Bal- 
lads, of which Coleridge's poem formed a part, usher in a 
new age, and herald the poetical renaissance, the nine- 
teenth century. This new order of poetry, coming thus at 
the end of the earlier age, is the outcome of certain forces 
of change which were at Avork far back within the eighteenth 
century itself. 

When Matthew Arnold speaks of the century as the age 
of prose and reason, he means his formula to apply rather 
to its earlier years. The first quarter of the century was 
dominated by that literary ideal of which the type and 
representative is Pope. It was a period of many-sided yet 
concentrated activities : the coffee-house and the salon were 
the stage on which was enacted the little drama of existence. 
Men's faces were set away from nature; indeed, so far 
from imagining a possible mystical meaning in nature, — 
as do the poets of the nineteenth century, — the men of 
this time were repelled by even her mere external mani- 
festations. Mountains, for example, which have found 
voice for all time in the poetry of Wordsworth, were 
looked upon as "excrescences of nature." In the lives 
of such men the imagination had no place; the free play of 
natural feelings was regarded with distrust. With us the 
worship of nature and the apotheosis of the individual, 
with his sensations, his moods, his deeper emotions, are 
commonplaces ; we take them for granted. We have only, 
however, to contrast our attitude to-day toward nature and 
toward human emotion with the eighteenth-century way of 
feeling to realize how great was the revolution in which a 
leading part was played by the Lyrical Ballads. 

As the range of ideas to be expressed in poetry was 
limited, so the form of expression was narrowly circum- 



XXXvi INTRODUCTION 

scribed.^ Instead of that assertion of the poet's own indi- 
viduality which we value to-day, the expression of his 
special personality, in the manner as well as in the matter, 
the men of Pope's age aimed at an absolute correctness, a 
perfect conformity to rule and measure. Order and sym- 
metry were the qualities to be sought ; and these found 
embodiment in the so-called heroic couplet, two verses of 
ten syllables each, and rimed. This form Pope brought 
to the highest point of perfection ; with Pope the manner 
was supported by the matter, the form was reenforced by 
the content. The couplet itself, however, was easy of 
manufacture; and when everybody took to writing verses, 
mere words came to be substituted for ideas, and, in the 
hands of Pope's imitators, poetry became a lifeless con- 
vention, effete and meaningless.^ These facts we must 
remember, by way of contrast, if we are to appreciate to 
the full the mysterious music of The Ancient Mariner. 

The second quarter of the eighteenth century witnessed 
the beginnings of the change. Nature was, in some sense, 

1 "I saw that the excellence of this kind [of poetry] consisted in 
the just and acute observations on men and manners in an artificial 
state of society, as its matter and substance, and in the logic of wit 
conveyed in smooth and strong epigrammatic couplets as its form. . . . 
Meantime the matter and diction seemed to me characterized not so 
much by poetic thoughts as by thoughts translated into the language 
of poetry." — Biog. Lit., Chap. I. 

2 See Wordsworth, Appendix to Preface of second edition of Lyrical 
Ballads, "On Poetic Diction." Compare Keats : — 

"But ye were dead 
To things ye knew not of, — were closely wed 
To musty laws lined out with wretched rule 
And compass vile : so that ye taught a school 
Of dolts to smooth, inlay, and clip, and fit, 
Till, like the certain wands of Jacob's wit. 
Their verses tallied. Easy was the task: 
A thousand handicraftsmen wore the mask 
Of Poesy." — Sleep and Poetry. 



THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE POEM xxxvii 

rediscovered by the author of the Seasons.'^ With Thomson 
the reaction against contemporary standards, as regards his 
choice of subject, was supported by a reaction in form. Aban- 
doning the conventional couplet, he adopted the blank verse 
of Milton, thus pointing the way for a return to earlier and 
fresher models of poetic style. 

The reform begun by Thomson was advanced by Joseph 
and Thomas Warton, by Collins and Gray, by Cowper, 
Burns, and William Blake, until the rediscovery of nature 
and the return to the simple language of men were consum- 
mated by Wordsworth, in whom nature found her supreme 
interpreter. This impulse toward a new order of poetry 
was communicated to Coleridge more immediately by the 
work of W. L. Bowles. Correcting his early extravagances 
of diction and exaggerated feeling, Bowles' poetry brought 
him to simplicity of style and a just sympathy with nature. 

The second great movement in the eighteenth century 
which affected more directly the author of The Ayident 
Mariner was the revival of tlie past. The third quarter of 
the century was well under way, when all Europe was stirred 
by the emergence of a strange kind of poetry, new to the 
age and yet, as it seemed, centuries old. This was the 
Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the Highlands of 
Scotland and translated from the Gaelic or Erse language. 
Actually composed by the pretended translator, Macpherson, 
these fragments, followed by the epic poems of Fingcd and 
Temora, were accepted by the age as the poetry of an ancient 
Scotch bard, Ossian, son of the hero Fingal. Genuine or 
not, they roused men to an absorbing interest in the litera- 
ture of earlier times. A few years after the publication of 
the Ossian poems, the taste for the older literature was 
further stimulated by the Rowley Poems, written by the boy 
Chatterton, in Bristol, and given to the world as the work 

1 James Thomson, 1700-1748. His first poem, Tri/ife)', was published 
in 1726. 



xxxviii INTRODUCTION 

of a monk of the fifteenth century. Chief among these 
manifestations of a revival of interest in the past in their 
influence on The xincient Mariner, was the publication, in 
1765, by Dr. Thomas Percy, of a manuscript collection of 
ballads. This return to an older and almost forgotten lit- 
erature laid hold powerfully on men's imaginations. 
Dominated by convention and rule, the men of the eight- 
eenth century found in the simplicity of diction, the trutli 
to nature, the freedom and swing of these old ballads, a 
new note. These songs and stories, tales in verse, the 
veritable literature of the people, sprung from unknown 
parentage, and passing from lip to lip, or preserved on 
"flying leaves," had been excluded from the company of 
the more elegant, polite "town-poetry" of the wits; and 
such notice as they received at the hands of Addison, 
Eowe, Parnell, Tickell, and Prior, awakened only a passing 
interest. It was not until the publication of Percy's 
Reliques, that men awoke to a real appreciation of these 
old songs, and were deeply and permanently stirred. 

The influence of this revival of ballad literature on the 
authors of the Lyrical Ballads, it is not difficult to trace. 
Of Percy's collection, Wordsworth said that English poetry 
had been " absolutely redeemed by it. I do not think that 
there is an able writer in verse of the present day who would 
not be proud to acknowledge his obligations to tlie Reliques; 
I know it is so with my friends ; and for myself, I am happy 
in this occasion to make a public avowal of my own." On 
Coleridge's poetry, the influence of the English ballads, 
though equally powerful, is less direct. In the Biograpliia 
Literaria Coleridge refers to Percy's service to English lit- 
erature, without attempting to determine the precise influ- 
ence of the Reliques upon himself. Wordsworth tells us 
that The Ancient Mariner was " professedly written in imi- 
tation of the style, as well as of the spirit of the elder 
poets." The impulse from the Reliques was communicated 



THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE POEM XXXIX 

to Coleridge in curiously roundabout fashion. The fame of 
Percy's book passed over into Germany. These English 
ballads inspired the young poet Biirger to write the ballad 
of Lenore. The ballad took Germany by storm, and crossed 
into England. Here a translation b}' William Taylor was 
published in 1796, in the New Monthly Magazine, the peri- 
odical for which Coleridge originally destined The Ancient 
Mariner. It is highly probable, if not certain, that Cole- 
ridge caught some of his inspiration from Biirger' s poem ; ^ 
and he adopted suggestions from Lenore for The Ancient 
Mariner."^ More significant than Burger's influence, how- 
ever, is the fact that by 1798 the ballad form was, so to 
speak, in the air; men were by this time accustomed to it, 
sensitive to its qualities, susceptible to its appeal. Words- 
worth employed it in a number of the poems in the Lyrical 
Ballads (the name of the volume is noteworthy). Cole- 
ridge's use of the ballad form, then, in The Ancient Mariner 
was not a startling innovation. People were ready to re- 
ceive it, and it was thus made possible by what had gone 
before. 

One other movement in the eighteenth century with 
which The Ancient Mariner was in some measure related, 
remains to be mentioned very briefly. The poem plays a 
part in what has ]3een very happily named the " Eenaissance 
of Wonder." The same decade which saw the publication 
of Ossian, of Percy's Eeliques, and produced Chatterton's 
Rowley Poems brought forth a novel destined to institute a 
" school " and to create for its kind a special and widespread 
taste. This was Horace Walpole's Castle of Otranto (1764), 
a story constructed out of supernatural elements. " The 

1 Charles Lamb, writing to Coleridge in 1790, exclaimed, "■ Have you 
read the ballad called Leonora in the second number of the Monthly 
Magazine ? If you have ! ! ! ! '' 

2 Coleridge makes the vessel go " down like lead," like the horse in 
the wild hunt in Lenore, Brandl, p. 201. Cf. also ihid.y p. 203. 



xl INTRODUCTION 

mountainous helmet, with its waving sable plumes, which 
crashes down into the courtyard of the Castle of Otranto at 
the very beginning of the narrative, unheralded and unex- 
plained, may be taken as a symbol and type of the sudden- 
ness with which supernatural terror was reintroduced into 
English fiction by Horace Walpole."^ The wave of super- 
naturalism here set in motion rolled on through the century, 
gathering volume as it moved; it was given new impetus 
and weight by the prodigiously successful novels of Mrs. 
Anne Radcliffe; to it contributed Biirger's ballad, Lenore. 
This ballad, which influenced Coleridge, as we have seen, 
and, afterward, AVords worth, Shelle}^, and Keats, ^ found a 
translator in Sir Walter Scott. Indeed, Scott's service to 
the movement did not end here, for he contributed several 
pieces to the collection of marvellous ballads brought out 
by "Monk" Lewis as Tales of Wonder (1801). In the 
Renaissance of Wonder a prominent part is played by 
Coleridge's poem. 

The Ancient Mariner, then, is in part the outcome of ten- 
dencies and forces at work in the age. Greater freedom 
and range in form, a regained simplicity of diction, an 
entrance into new realms of action and of feeling, — these 
characteristics are what the poem owes, in some measure, 
to its antecedents. Yet it is not enough to see in The 
Ancient Mariner simply one expression of a great move- 
ment; nor, again, is the poem merely a combination in new 
form of certain clearly defined elements, such as a dream 
and an episode borrowed from a book of voyages. In it we 
must further trace, in so far as analysis can help us, the 
working of the poet's imagination. Wherein is the poem 
made possible by his special temperament? And is there 
in his poetry which preceded The Ancient Mariner any hint 
of what was to come? 

1 Walter Raleigh, The English Novel, p. 223. 

2 See A. Brandl's Note on Lenore in England in Erich Schmidt's 
Characteristiken., Essay on Biirger's Lenore, 



THE rOKM OF THE POEM xli 

The study of Coleridge's life shows hiin to have been 
preeminently a dreamer; the only real life for him was the 
life lived in the imagination. Curiously enough, however^ 
his temperament finds almost no expression in his poetr; 
His earlier verse is unimaginative, and gives singularly little 
promise of The Ancient Mariner. The poems in his first 
published volume (1796) are marked by a " general turgid- 
ness of diction." His work is chiefly imitative. In his 
Christ's Hospital days he writes verses in the eighteenth- 
century pseudo-classic manner.^ Then he takes to imita- 
ting Bowles. In the work produced at Cambridge we have 
reminiscences of Milton and Gray.^ It is an extraordinary 
fact in the poetical history of this extraordinary man that 
his genius burst at once into full flower. In this sudden 
unfolding of his powers it is certain that his association 
with Wordsworth counted for very much. Furthermore, at 
the opening of this period of imaginative poetical produc- 
tion, Coleridge began the practice of taking opium. The 
measure of these two influences, however, — the association 
with Wordsworth and the use of opium — cannot be deter- 
mined precisely. We must content ourselves simply with 
noting the facts. The investigation which helped us to 
appreciate in part the poet's transmuting power here fails. 
AVe have no data on which to base exact conclusions; and 
analysis carried into the domain of speculation and guess- 
work, however interesting it may be, has no scientific value. 
At this point, then, we may leave our study of sources and 
turn to the poem itself. 

V. THE FOEM OF THE POEM 

In The Ancient Mariner we recognize a special kind of 
poem; and when Wordsworth tells us that it was "pro- 

1 Julia, Destruction of the Bastile, Progress of Vice, etc. 

2 4 Wish^ Song of the Pixies^ Lines on an Autumnal Evening, etc, 



xlii INTRODUCTION 

fessedly written in imitation of the style, as well as of the 
spirit of the elder poets," he gives us a clue to its precise 
form. The Ancient Mariner is a ballad. As a ballad, then, 
we must regard it if we are to appreciate it rightly. In 
order to enter into its spirit and fully understand its form, 
let us turn for a moment to its prototype, the traditional 
" popular ballad " of the earlier age. 

A ballad is defined as a " narrative song, a short tale in 
lyric vtjrse." ^ In its 23rimitive form, it was sung as the 
accompaniment to a dance; a repetition of the dance 
movement was accompanied by the refrain; further, the 
ballad was often extended by improvisation. The ballad, 
then, was intended to be sung or chanted, although to-day 
we are content simply to recite it.^ It has no single fixed 
form; it is not the work of any one man. Eather it is 
a growth. Illustrative of the "communal" character of 
the ballads is the fact that they have come down to us 
anonymous. Preceding the poetry of art, they are the 
expression of the spirit of the people as a whole, never of 
the personality of an individual. 

As distinctively the poetry of the people, enjoyed by all 
classes, these old narrative songs, "canticles of love and 
woe," are characterized by an elemental simplicity and 
immediateness. The narrative receives no coloring from 
the mood and emotions of any individual poet; the passions 
portrayed are those common to mankind. The breadth and 
strength of feeling, the largeness of movement, find fit 
expression; for this objectivity of presentation, this direct- 
ness in the march of the story, is sustained by a verse-form 
of great simplicity and flexibility. 

The ballads are composed in stanzas of free form, stanzas 
of two, four, five, six, or even more lines. These lines, or 

' Professor F. J. Child, in Johnson's Cyclopcedia, article "Ballads." 
2 It is interesting to notice that Hazlitt records that both Words- 
worth and Coleridge recited poetry with a kind of " chaunt." 



THE FORM OF THE POEM xliii 

verses, are not measured off according to the precise num- 
ber of syllables, as in the heroic couplet, in blank verse, or 
in such stanzas, for example, as Gray uses for his Elegy ; 
instead, the metre is determined by the number of stresses 
or accented syllables. Of the unaccented syllables there 
may be more than one in each foot, as is not the case with 
the strict iambic verse, represented by Gray's Elegy: — 

"The cur 1 few tolls | the knell | of part | ing day, 

The low I ing herd | winds slow | ly o'er | the lea, 

\j jL \j Z. w /- \j ^. Kj ^ 

The plow I man home | ward plods | his wear | y way, 

\j — \j j^ \j Z- \j — \j /_ 
And leaves | the world | to dark | ness and | to me." 

The metre here is strictly iambic : each foot 'contains but 
two syllables; and in each foot the accent, or stress, falls 
on the second syllable. With this contrast the following 
stanza from the ballad of Fair Margaret and Siveet William: 

"As it I fell out I on a long | summer's day, 
Two li)V I ers they sat | on a hill; 
They sat | togeth | er that long | summer's day. 



\j 



/ vy / . , / 



And could | not talk | their fill," 

In place of the absolute regularity of Gray's measure, Ave 
have here in the first verse and in the third two feet out of 
the four which contain more than two syllables. The basis 
of this metre, then, is not number of syllables, but stress.^ 

1 AVhat Coleridge says of the metre of Christahel applies equally to 
the ballad measure. "The metre of the Cliristabel is not, properly 
speaking, irregular, though it may seem so from its being founded on 
a new principle : namely, that of counting in each line the accents, not 



xliv INTRODUCTION 

We need not at this point analyze the ballad metre in its 
details, classifying all the variations it admits on the 
iambic line and all the variations possible in the make-up 
of the stanza.^ It is enough to note that the metrical form 
of the ballad is characterized by freedom. This freedom 
lends to the march of the story that swiftness of movement 
essential to narrative; and the flexibility of this free 
measure makes possible an infinite variety of effect.^ 

Such is the poetry, the style and spirit of which Coleridge 
aimed to catch and reproduce in The Ancient Mariner. How 
far has he succeeded? First of all, for the instinctive 
rightness of the old ballads we must reckon with the sub- 
stitution by Coleridge of skilled work; with the unconscious 
poetry of these songs of the people, we must contrast his 
awareness of certain effects to be produced definitely and 
consciously, and his ability knowingly to produce them. 

the syllables. Though the latter may vary from seven to twelve, yet 
in each line the accents will be found to be only four. Nevertheless 
this occasional variation in number of syllables is not introduced wan- 
tonly, or for the mere ends of convenience, but in correspondence with 
some transition, in the nature of the imagery or passion." The prin- 
ciple Coleridge here lays down, although unfamiliar to the eighteenth 
century with its rigid "correctness " in verse, was not really new. The 
"four-stress " measure is the verse-form of Anglo-Saxon poetry, wliicli 
is scanned according to stress and not at all according to the number 
of syllables ; and four-stressed verse is found throughout the range of 
English poetry. Browning, for example, uses it in How they hr ought 
the Good News from Ghent to Aix : — 

" I sprang to the stirrup, and Joris, and he; 
I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three ; 
' Good speed! ' cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew; 
' Speed ! ' echoed the wall to us galloping through." 

1 The details of scansion are discussed in the notes on the poem. 

2 For a thorough -going study of the ballads, the student should 
consult Professor Gmnmere's Old English Ballads, and Professor 
Beers' History of English Eomanticism, Chapter VIII. For ballad 
influence on Coleridge, see Brandl, pp. 117, 203 ff. 



JUDGMENTS AND APPRECIATIONS xlv 

Secondly, for the elemental simplicity of emotion of primi- 
tive folk, we have here portrayed the frenzy, the soul-crises, 
of a man possessed. Blind fate, taking form in spirits 
and powers, manifests a demonic activity; destiny fulfils 
itself through the agency of spectral persecution. Working 
tlius in the intention rather than with the material of the old 
ballads, Coleridge by his magic transports us into another 
world. Once we grant him his conditions, suspending there- 
with our disbelief by the exercise of "poetic faith," then, 
as at a play or in sleep, everything follows naturally and 
convincingly. For just as the play is the significant and 
vital reality at the theatre, and dreams furnish us the reality 
of sleep, so, in the supernatural world, the supernatural is 
the natural. 

In form, Coleridge avails himself of all the capabilities of 
his instrument. The old ballads work by their very artless- 
ness; their sincerity is so real; not a false note impairs 
their rude strength of utterance. While losing none of its 
largeness and freedom of mood and movement, the measure 
is brought under control by Coleridge, who with supreme 
art does not weaken in refining it. Master of his in- 
strument, he uses it with that ultimate skill which con- 
ceals itself to draw from it its sublest harmonies. But the 
work of appreciation I leave to the critics of the poem. 

VI. JUDGMENTS AND APPRECIATIONS 

It is difficult for us — inheritors as we are of all the 
poetry of the nineteenth century — to realize that The 
Ancient Mariner, and with it the Lyrical Ballads, were 
received by the critics with ridicule and abuse. Even 
Southey, himself a poet and a Liberal, and the personal 
friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge, reviewed the volume 
in a narrow and carping spirit. In the Critical Revieio for 
September, 1798, he wrote : ^ — 

1 For Lamb's reply to Soutliey's criticism, seepos^, p. 40. 



xlvi INTRODUCTION 

" In a very different style of poetry [from the other poems 
in the Lyrical Ballads'], is the Rime of the Ancyent Marinere ; 
a ballad (says the advertisement) ^professedly written in 
imitation of the style, as well as of the spirit of the elder 
poets.' We are tolerably conversant with the early English 
poets ; and can discover no resemblance whatever, except in 
antiquated spelling and a few obsolete words. This piece 
appears to us perfectly original in style as well as in story. 
Many of the stanzas are laboriously beautiful; but in con- 
nection they are absurd or unintelligible. . . . We do not 
sufficiently understand the story to analyse it. It is a Dutch 
attempt at German sublimity. Genius has here been 
employed in producing. a poem of little merit." 

Quite as unintelligeut and impercipient as Southey's 
review was the criticism in the Monthly Review for 
June, 1799. 

"Though we have been extremely entertained with the 
fancy, the facility, and (in general) the sentiments, of these 
pieces, we cannot regard them as poetry, of a class to be 
cultivated at the expence of a higher species of versifica- 
tion, unknown in our language at the time when our elder 
writers, whom this author condescends to imitate, wrote 
their ballads. — Would it not be degrading poetry, as well 
as the English language, to go back to the barbarous and 
uncouth numbers of Chaucer? Suppose, instead of modern- 
izing the old bard, that the sweet and polished measures, 
on lofty subjects, of Dry den. Pope, and Gray, were to be 
transmuted into the dialect and versification of the xivth 
century? Should we be gainers by the retrogradation? . . . 
We have had pleasure in reading the reliques of antient 
poetry, because it was antient ; and because we were sur- 
prised to find *so many beautiful thoughts in the rude 
numbers of barbarous times. These reasons will not apply 
to imitations of antique versification. . . . The author's 
first piece, The Rime of the ancyent marinere, ... is the 



JUDGMENTS AND APPRECIATIONS xlvii 

strangest story of a cock and a bull that we ever saw on 
paper: yet, though it seems a rhapsody of unintelligible 
wildness and incoherence, (of which we do not perceive the 
drift, unless the joke lies in depriving the wedding guest 
of his share of the feast,) there are in it poetical touches of 
an exquisite kind.'^ 

Even Wordsworth failed to perceive the higher qualities of 
The Ancient Mariner. In the second edition of the Lyrical 
Ballads he printed the following superior and obtuse 
note: — 

" The Author was himself very desirous that it should be 
suppressed. This wish had arisen from a consciousness of 
the defects of the Poem, and from a knowledge that many 
persons had been much displeased with it. The Poem of my 
Friend has indeed many great defects ; first, that the prin- 
cipal person has no distinct character, either in his profes- 
sion of Mariner, or as a human being Avho having been 
long under the controul of supernatural impressions might 
be supposed himself to partake of something supernatural : 
secondly, that he does not act, but is constantly acted upon : 
thirdly, that the events having no necessary connection do 
not produce each other; and lastly, that the imagery is 
somewhat too laboriously accumulated. Yet the Poem con- 
tains many delicate touches of passion, and indeed the 
passion is everywhere true to nature; a great number of the 
stanzas present beautiful images, and are expressed with 
unusual felicity of language ; and the versification, tho' 
the metre is in itself unfit for long poems, is harmonious 
and artfully varied, exhibiting the utmost powers of that 
metre, and every variety of which it is capable. It therefore 
appeared to me that these several merits (the first of which, 
namely, that of the passion, is of the highest kind) gave to 
the Poem a value which is not often possessed by better 
Poems. On this account I requested of my Friend to per- 
mit me to republish it." 



xlviii INTRODUCTION 

In challenge of this Note, Lamb wrote to Wordsworth, 
January, 1801 : — 

" For me, I was never so affected with any human tale. 
After first reading it, I was totally possessed with it for 
many days. I dislike all the miraculous part of it; but 
the feelings of the man under the operation of such scenery, 
dragged me along like Tom Pipe's magic whistle. I totally 
diifer from your idea that the Marinere should have had 
a character and profession. This is a beauty in Gulliver^ s 
Travels, where the mind is kept in a placid state of little 
wonderments ; but the Ancient Marinere undergoes such 
trials as overwhelm and bury all individuality or memory 
of what he was — like the state of a man in a bad dream, 
one terrible peculiarity of which is, that all consciousness 
of personality is gone. Your other observation is, I think 
as well, a little unfounded: the 'Marinere,' from being 
conversant in supernatural events, has acquired a super- 
natural and strange cast of i^hrase, eye, appearance, etc., 
which frighten the ^wedding guest.' You will excuse my 
remarks, because I am hurt and vexed that you should think 
it necessary, with a prose apology, to open the eyes of dead 
men that cannot see." 

As a striking illustration of the revolution in taste which 
the nineteenth century has witnessed, we need pnly set off 
against the early criticisms and judgments of the Beviews 
certain recent appreciations of The Ancient Mariner. Out 
of many, I select a few representative opinions. 

"More amenable to our judgment [than Christabel and 
Kuhla Khctn], and susceptible of a more definite admira- 
tion, the 'Ancient Mariner,' and the few other poems cast 
in something of a ballad type, which we may rank around 
or below it, belong to another class. The chief of these 
is so well known that it needs no fresh comment. Only 
I will say that to some it may seem as though this great 
sea-piece might have had more in it of the air and savour 



JUDGMENTS AND APPRECIATIONS xlix 

of the sea. Perhaps it is none the worse ; and indeed any 
one speaking of so great and famous a poem must feel and 
know that it cannot but be right, although he or another 
may think it would be better if this were retrenched or 
that appended. And this poem is beyond question one of 
the supreme triumphs of poetry. . . . 

" The ' Ancient Mariner ' has doubtless more of breadth 
and space, more of material force and motion, than anything 
else of the poet's. And the tenderness of sentiment which 
tonches with significant colour the pure white imagination 
is here no longer morbid or languid, as in the earlier poems 
of feeling and emotion. . . . For the execution, I presume 
no human eye is too dull to see how perfect it is, and how 
high in kind of perfection. Here is not the speckless 
and elaborate finish which shows everywhere the fresh rasp 
of file or chisel on its smooth and spruce excellence ; this 
is faultless after the fashion of a flower or a tree. Thus it 
has grown: not thus has it been carved." 

Swinburne, Essays and Studies : Coleridge. 

"The same expectation of the possibility of marvel and 
horror, of mysterious sins and their forgiveness, and of the 
chance of meeting some forgotten spiritual life which was 
before man came on earth, which creeps over us as we read 
The Ancient Mariner, belongs to seamen who have been lost 
in unvisited spaces of ocean, vext with everlasting calm. 
I never met a sailor whose ship had been among the lonely 
places of the sea, who did not know of their hauntings, who 
would be surprised to see the phantom ship, who did not 
hear in the air that sighed in the rigging the voices of the 
creatures that are half of the waters and half of the air 
above them. With wonderful but unconscious skill Cole- 
ridge has kept this sea-poem within the limits of this sub- 
jective feeling. The supernatural in it is the translation 
into form of the unconscious emotions of the lonely Mariner; 



1 INTRODUCTION 

but all the time, in order to actualize the poem, the scenery 
is kept extraordinarily true to nature. The single motive, — ■ 

" ' He prayetli well who lovetli well, 
Both man and bird and beast,' 

is so slight that it does not take the whole out of the world of 
dreaming phantasy, out of the mystery of the great and soli- 
tary sea; and yet, when it comes in at the end, it throws back 
its single impression on the whole and gives it lyric unity. 

"I believe this motive grew out of the poem as it went 
along, and that it did not form the previous basis of the 
poem. . . . 

" So the poem is a revelation made by Coleridge of what 
he believed to be always the case in the spiritual world. 
That world is on the side of pity and love, and men who 
violate these are punished by hardness of heart. They 
cannot pray, they cannot be wise, they cannot bless the 
living creatures of the land and sea and sky. Nature to 
them is dead; and if there be powers bound up with Nature, 
these are their enemies till they change their hearts. And 
Coleridge imagined the lonesome Spirit of the South Pole 
who loved the Albatross, and his fellow-demons, the invisi- 
ble inhabitants of the element, and the great Ocean that 
always looks at the moon, and the Sun and the Moon, who 
act with the Polar Spirit; and Death and Life in Death, — 
the spiritual powers which execute the sanctions of the Law 
of Pity. 

, " To support this atmosphere, in which the laws of the 
spiritual world take form as living beings, all the things of 
Nature mentioned in the poem are impersonated, have a life 
and will. The Storm Blast which drives the ship southward 
is as alive as the North Wind is in the Teuton's tale. Even 
the ' Dark' itself comes like a giant with one stride over the 
sea. The water snakes, the creatures of the calm, are full 
of happiness in their own beauty. The Ocean breathes and 



JUDGMENTS AND APPRECIATIONS li 

moves and acts like one vast spirit. The Moon and the 
Stars have their own being. . . . 

" We are in a living world, yet as this part of the poem 
verges too near to the allegorical, it is so far forth removed 
from the mysterious in which it is conceived. To avoid 
this fault, the basis of the poem has a psychological mystery 
in it, such as Coleridge loved. The Ancient Mariner him- 
self has a spiritual Power which enables him to know the 
man to whom he must tell his tale, and who must listen to 
him. On this mission he wanders^ with strange power of 
speech, from land to land. This is the actual supernatural, 
the spiritual Power in the poem ; not allegorical, not sub- 
jective. And this it is which after all gives to the poem 
its deepest strangeness. All the wonders are made truly. -_=^- 
spiritual by it. 

As to its poetry, it is like that of Christabel, not to be 
analyzed or explained. The spirit herself of Poetry is 
everywhere, in these two poems, felt, but never obtruding, 
touching spiritual life and earthly loveliness with equal 
light, and so charming sense and soul with music, that what 
is spiritual seems sensible, and what is of the senses seems 
spiritual." 

Stopford Brooke, The Golden Book of Coleridge. 

"Any one examining the poem with a critical eye for its 
machinery and groundwork, will have noticed that Cole- 
ridge is careful not to introduce any element of the mar- 
vellous or supernatural until he has transported the reader 
beyond the pale of definite geographical knowledge, and thus 
left behind him all those conditions of the known and the 
familiar, all those associations with recorded fact and experi- 
ence, which would have created an inimical atmosphere. 
Indeed, there is perhaps something rather inartistic in his 
undisguised haste to convey us to t he sesth etica lly nec essary "^ y 
region. In some half-dozen stanzasT^eginning wit5&^^he 



lii INTRODUCTION 

ship was cleared,' [sic'] we find ourselves crossing the Line 
and driven far toward the Southern Pole. Beyond a few 
broad indications thus vouchsafed, Coleridge very astutely 
takes pains to avoid anything like geography. We reach 
that silent sea into which we are the first that ever burst, 
and that is sufficient for imaginative ends. It is enough 
that the world, as known to actual navigators, is left behind, 
and a world which the poet is free to colonize with the 
wildest children of his dreaming brain, has been entered. 
Forthwith, to all intents and purposes, we may say, in the 
words of Goethe, as rendered by Shelley: — 

" ' The bounds of true and false are passed ; — 
Lead us on, thou wandermg gleam.' 

Thenceforth we cease to have any direct relations with the 
verifiable. Natural law is suspended; standards of proba- 
bility have ceased to exist. Marvel after marvel is accepted 
by us, as by the Wedding-Guest, with the unquestioning 
faith of 'a three years' child.' We become insensibly 
acclimatized to this dreamland. Nor is it the chaotic, 
anarchic, incoherent world of arabesque romance, where 
the real and unreal by turns arbitrarily interrupt and sup- 
plant each other, and are never reconciled at heart. On 
the contrar}^, here is no inconsistency, for with the con- 
struction of this dream -realm nothing except the natural 
and the probable could be inconsistent. Here is no danger 
of the intellect or the reason pronouncing an adverse judg. 
ment, for the venue has been changed to a court where the 
jurisdiction of fantasy is supreme. Thus far, then, the 
Logic of the Incredible is perfect, and the result, from 
the view point of art, magnificent. But at last we quit 
this consistently, unimpeachably, most satisfactorily impos- 
sible world; we are restored to the world of common expe- 
rience; and when so restoring us, the poet makes his first 
and only mistake. For the concluding miracle, or rather 



JUDGMENTS AND APPRECIATIONS • liii 

brace of miracles — the apparition of the angelic forms 
standing over the corpses of the crew, and the sudden pre- 
ternatural sinking of the ship — take place just when we 
have returned to the province of the natural and regular, to 
the sphere of the actual and the known; just when, floating 
into harbour, we sight the well-remembered kirk on the rock, 
and the steady weathercock which the moonlight steeps in 
silentness. A dissonant note is struck at once. We have 
left a world where prodigies were normal, and have returned 
to one where they are monstrous. But prodigies still pur- 
sue us with unseasonable pertinacity, and our feeling is 
somewhat akin to that of the Ancient Mariner himself, 
whose prayer is that he may either ^be awake ' or may 
* sleep away' \_sic']. We would fain either surrender uncon- 
ditionally to reality, or remain free, as naturalized citizens 
of a self-governing dreamland." 

William Watson, Excursions in Criticism : 
Coleridge's Superiiaturahsm. 

"He has wiitten some of the most poetical poetry in the 
language, and one poem, the 'Ancient Mariner,' not only 
unparalleled but unapproached in its kind, and that kind 
of the rarest. It is marvellous in its mastery over that 
delightfully fortuitous inconsequence that is the adamantine 
logic of dreamland. Coleridge has taken the old ballad 
measure and given to it, by an indefinable charm wholly 
his own, all the sweetness, all the melody and compass of a 
symphony. And how picturesque it is in the proper sense 
of the word. I know nothing like it. There is not a 
description in it. It is all picture. 'Descriptive poets gen- 
erally confuse us with multiplicity of detail ; we cannot see 
their forest for the trees ; but Coleridge never errs in this 
way. W^ith instinctive tact he touches the right chord of 
association, and is satisfied, as we also are. I should 
find it hard to explain the singular charm of his diction, 



liv INTRODUCTION 

there is so much nicety of art and purpose in it, whether 
for music or meaning. Nor does it need any explanation, 
for we all feel it. The words seem common words enough, 
but in the order of them, in the choice, variety, and posi- 
tion of the vowel-sounds they become magical. The most 
decrepit vocable in the language throws away its crutches 
to dance and sing at his piping. I cannot think it a per- 
sonal peculiarity, but a matter of universal experience, that 
more bits of Coleridge have embedded themselves in my 
memory than of any other poet who delighted my youth — 
unless I should except the sonnets of Shakespeare. This 
argues perfection of expression. Let me cite an example 
or two : — 

" ' The sun's rim dips, the stars rush out, 
At one stride comes the dark ; 
With far-heard whisper through the dark [sic'] 
Off shot the spectre barque.' 

Or take this as a bit of landscape : — 

" ' Beneath j'on birch with silver bark 
And boughs so pendulous and fair, 
The brook falls scattered down the rock, 
And all is mossy there.' 

It is a perfect little picture and seems so easily done. But 
try to do something like it. Coleridge's words have the 
unashamed nakedness of Scripture, of the Eden of diction 
ere the voluble serpent had entered it. This felicity of 
speech in Coleridge's best verse is the more remarkable 
because it was an acquisition. His earlier poems are apt 
to be turgid, in his prose there is too often a languor of pro- 
fuseness, and there are pages where he seems to be talking 
to himself and not to us. . . . When he is well inspired, as 
in his best poetry he commonly is, he gives us the very 
quintessence of perception, the clearly crystallized precipi- 
tation of all that is most precious in the ferment of impres- 



JUDGMENTS AND APPRECIATIONS Iv 

sion after the impertinent and obtrusive particulars have 
evaporated from the memory. It is the pure visual ecstasy 
disengaged from the confused and confusing material that 
gave it birtli. It seems the very beatitude of artless sim- 
plicity, and is the most finished product of art. I know 
nothing so perfect in its kind since Dante." 

Lo^yELL, Literary and Political Addresses: Coleridge. 

" The Ancient Mariner, as also, in its measure, Christabel, 
is a 'romantic' poem, impressing us by bold invention, and 
appealing to that taste for the supernatural, that longing for 
le frisson, a shudder, to which the 'romantic' school in Ger- 
many, and its derivations in England and France, directly 
ministered. In Coleridge, personally, this taste had been 
encouraged by his odd and out-of-the-way reading in the 
old-fashioned literature of the marvellous — books like 
Purchas's Pilgrims, early voyages like Hakluyt's, old 
naturalists and visionary moralists, like Thomas Burnet, 
from whom he quotes the motto of The Ancient Mariner, 
^ Facile credo, 2:)lures esse natur as invisihiles quam visihiles in 
renim universitate,' etc. Fancies of the strange things 
which may very well happen, even in broad daylight, to 
men shut up alone in ships far off on the sea, seem to have 
occurred to the human mind in all ages with a peculiar 
readiness, and often have about them, from the story of the 
stealing of Dionysus downwards, the fascination of a cer- 
tain dreamy grace, which distinguishes them from other 
kinds of marvellous inventions. This sort of fascination 
The Ancient Mariner brings to its highest degree : it is the 
delicacy, the dreamy grace, in his presentation of the mar- 
vellous, which makes Coleridge's work so remarkable. The 
too palpable intruders from a spiritual world in almost all 
ghost literature, in Scott and Shakespeare even, have a kind 
of crudity or coarseness. Coleridge's power is in the very 
fineness with which, as by some really ghostly finger, he 



Ivi INTRODUCTION 

brings home to our inmost sense his inventions, daring as 
they are — the skeleton ship, the polar spirit, the inspiriting 
of the dead corpses of the ship's crew. The Rhyme of the 
Ancient Mariner has the plausibility, the perfect adaptation 
to reason and the general aspect of life, which belongs to 
the marvellous, when actually presented as a part of a 
credible experience in our dreams. Doubtless, the mere 
experience of the opium-eater, the habit he must almost 
necessarily fall into of noting the more elusive phenomena 
of dreams, had something to do with that: in its essence, 
however, it is connected with a more purely intellectual 
circumstance in the development of Coleridge's X->oetic gift. 
Some one once asked William Blake, to whom Coleridge has 
many resemblances, when either is at his best (that whole 
episode of the re-inspiriting of the ship's crew in The Ancient 
Mariner being comparable to Blake's well-known design of 
tlie 'Morning Stars singing together ') whether he had ever 
seen a ghost, and was surprised when the famous seer, who 
ought, one would think, to have seen so many, answered 
frankly, 'Only once! ' His 'spirits,' at once more delicate, 
and so much more real, than any ghost — the burden, as 
they were the privilege, of his temperament — like it, were 
an integral element in his everyday life. And the differ- 
ence of mood expressed in that question and its answer, is 
indicative of a change of temper in regard to the super- 
natural which has passed over the whole modern mind. . . . 
" It is this finer, more delicately marvellous supernatural- 
ism, fruit of his more delicate psychology, that Coleridge 
infuses into romantic adventure, itself also then a new or 
revived thing in English literature; and with a fineness of 
weird effect in The Ancient Mariner, unknown in those older, 
more simple, romantic legends and ballads. It is a flower 
of mediseval or later German romance, growing up in the 
peculiarly compounded atmosphere of modern psychological 
speculation, and putting forth in it wholly new qualities. 



JUDGMENTS AND APPRECIATIONS Ivii 

The quaint prose commentary, whicli runs side by side with 
the verse of The Ancient Mariner, illustrates this — a com- 
position of quite a different shade of beauty and merit from 
that of the verse wJiich it accompanies, connecting this, the 
chief poem of Coleridge, with his philosophy, and empha- 
sizing therein that psychological interest of whicli I have 
spoken, its curious soul-lore. . . . 

" It is Coleridge's one great complete work, the one really 
finished thing, in a life of many beginnings. Christabel 
remained a fragment. In The Ancie}(t Mariner this unity 
is secured in part by the skill with which the incidents of 
the marriage feast are made to break in dreamily from time 
to time upon the main story. And then, how pleasantly, 
how reassuringly, the whole nightmare story itself is made 
to end, among the clear fresh sounds and lights of the bay, 
where it began, with 

" ' The mooii-Ught steeped iii silentness, 
The steady weather-cock.' '' 

Walter Pater, Appreciations : Coleridge. 

" Like a great shadow moving noiselessly over the widest 
sweep of mountain and plain, a pillar of cloud — or like the 
flight of indescribable fleecy hosts of winged vapours spread- 
ing their impalpable influence like a breath, changing the 
face of the earth, subduing the thoughts of men, yet nothing^ 
and capable of no interpretation — such was the great poem 
destined to represent in the world of poetry the effect which 
these mystic cloud-agencies have upon the daylight and the 
sky. . . . 

" When the tale has reached its height of mystery and 
emotion, a change ensues; gradually the greater spell is 
removed, the spirits depart, the strain softens — with a 
weird yet gentle progress the ship comes 'slowly and 
smoothly,' without a breeze, back to the known and visible. 



Iviii INTKODUCTION 

As the voyage approaches its conclusion, ordinary instru- 
mentalities appear once more. There is first the rising of 
the soft, familiar wind, 'like a meadow gale in spring,' then 
the blessed vision of the lighthouse-top, the hill, the kirk, 
all those well-known realities which gradually relieve the 
absorbed excitement of the listener, and favour his slow 
return to ordinary daylight. And then comes the ineffable, 
half-childish, half-divine simplicity of those soft moral- 
izings at the end, so strangely different from the tenor of 
the tale, so wonderfully perfecting its visionary strain. 
After all, the poet seems to say, after this weird excursion 
into the very deepest, awful heart of the seas and mysteries, 
here is your child's moral, a tender little half -trivial senti- 
ment, yet profound as the blue depths of heaven : — 

" ' He prayeth best, who loveth best 
All things both great and small ; 
For the dear God who loveth us, 
He made and loveth all.' 

"This unexpected gentle conclusion brings our feet back 
to the common soil with a bewildered sweetness of relief 
and soft quiet after the prodigious strain of mental excite- 
ment Avhich is like nothing else we can remember in poetry. 
The effect is one rarely produced, and which few poets have 
the strength and daring to accomplish, sinking from the 
highest notes of spiritual music to the absolute simplicity 
of exhausted nature. Thus we are set down on the soft 
grass, in a tender bewilderment, out of the clouds. The 
visionary voyage is over, we are back again on the mortal 
soil from which we started; but never more, never again, 
can the visible and invisible bear to us the same meaning. 
For once in our lives, if never before, we have passed the 
borders of the unseen." 

Mrs. Oliphant, Literary History of England. 



SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS lix 

VII. SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS 

The foregoing pages are intended, not merely to serve as 
an introduction to The Ancient Mariner, but also to embody 
suggestions as to method in the study of literature. Young 
students beginning the study of literature are apt, as is 
natural, to lack the sense of relation; they consider the 
particular poem or novel they are studying as a final and 
total production, quite apart from anything else, and exist- 
ing in and for itself. The biography of the author is, at 
its best, a mere narrative of events, and at its worst, simply 
a string of anecdotes. And his other works are so many 
other literary productions, having no necessary relation to 
the man who wrote them or to each other. Such a concep- 
tion of a novel or poem I believe to be not uncommon 
with young people, in spite of the fact that manifestly 
the outcome of any study under these conditions can be only 
cramping, and in the end pernicious, as leading to false 
methods and wrong results. 

To correct the mistaken conception of the meaning of 
biography, I have in my sketch of Coleridge's life in- 
sisted tacitly on the importance of a clearly defined point 
of view. The biography of a poet becomes significant 
in so far as we see in the events of his life the causes 
or the results of his personality, his habit of mind, his 
temperament, his genius. The personality is the main 
thing; to that events are incidental, and they are signifi- 
cant in so far as they help us to understand the person- 
ality. For if we do not know the man, we cannot read 
aright the full meaning of his work. Thus, in my narra- 
tive of Coleridge's life, my choice of details has been 
determined in every instance by the desire to set forth 
the man who wrote The Ancient Mariner. It is the poet 
whom I have thrown into relief, rather than the critic, 
the philosopher, or the religious teacher. For it was pre- 



Ix INTRODUCTION 

eminently as the dreamer that Coleridge was able to write 
the poem. 

So, too, in approaching the study of the poem, I thought 
it advisable to make use of the historical method. The 
work of appreciation, surely not the least important part 
of the study of poetry, I leave to the students themselves, 
under the guidance of the recognized critics, whose judg- 
ments and impressions I cite. Appreciation, important 
as it is, is apt to be misleading and unsound, if not 
reenforced by a knowledge of such facts about the poem 
as are within our reach. These facts are supplied, first, 
by a thorough understanding of the man himself, as re- 
vealed in his biography, and, secondly, by a study of the 
sources of the poem, its antecedents, and its place in litera- 
ture, — literature, that is, regarded not as the sporadic 
expression of this or that man's ideas, but as a continuous 
development. What the end of the study of literature 
should be, whether it should be pleasure or truth, whether 
the method should be impressionistic and appreciative, or 
dogmatic, or historical and scientific, I do not intend to 
discuss here. My purpose is simply, by suggesting the use 
of the historical method, supplemented by appreciation, 
to point the way to the understanding and enjoyment of 
literature. 

The historical method I have used in its widest scope 
in Section IV. ; and this section I have written primarily 
for teachers. This the pupils may omit until they are 
thoroughly familiar with the poem. The pupils may be 
asked to read Sections I. and V. before beginning the study 
of the poem itself. Then the poem should be read through 
aloud, and, if possible, at one sitting : on this first reading 
no attention need be paid to the notes. The poem should 
then be read with reference to the story; once the pupils 
have the narrative in mind, they may turn to Section 
III. to see where the poet found his narrative, and 



SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS Ixi 

so learn what use he made of his materials. Here the 
teacher may point out that in just the same way Shake- 
speare borrowed the plots of many of his plays. The pupils 
should note the difference between the crude material and 
the finished poem. The teacher should point out that, 
although we see the unfused elements on the one side and 
the fine gold on the other, no critical alchemy has ever 
discovered the process of transmutation. No one holds 
the "philosopher's stone " of poetry but the poet himself; it 
is this undiscoverable power which constitutes his genius. 

After this comparison between materials and poem, the 
pupils sliould study the poem in detail with the help of the 
notes. Then they should be asked to give their opinions 
on The Ancient Mariner. Not until they have mastered 
the poem for themselves, should they be allowed to read the 
criticisms One lesson that the young student of literature 
should learn early is to form his own independent judgment 
on what he reads. To borrow one's opinions before reading 
for oneself weakens the critical fibre and savors of intel- 
lectual dishonesty. If there is time, a good plan would be 
to have the pupils give their opinions of the criticisms cited, 
and to debate, from their own point of view, the dicta of 
the critics. Anything is helpful which enables young 
people to give the reason for their own opinion, and leads 
them out into intellectual independence. 

After this thoroughgoing study of the poem, the introduc- 
tion may be read as a whole, by way of summing up results.^ 

1 If time serves, the student should read as ilkistrating the other 
work of Coleridge's poetic prime, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Lewli, 
Love, Ballad of the Bark Ladie, and for the sake of contrast with The 
Ancient Mariner, part at least of The Three Graces. Of his other 
work might be read 77?^' JSolian Harp, Frost at Midnight, Lines to 
Wordsworth, Pains of Sleep, and the splendid Ode to Dejection. To 
these might be added some of Wordsworth's poems in the Lyrical 
Ballads, The Thorn, We are Seven, and especially the Lines written 
a few miles above Tintern Abbey. 



Ixii INTRODUCTION 

The Ancient Mtwiner, then, regarded from this point of 
view, may serve as a kind of introduction to the study of 
literature. One hint now as to the method of studying the 
poem itself. Here the end and aim should be to let the poem 
make its appeal as poetry. Details of scansion should be 
dwelt upon only in so far as they help in the right reading 
of the verse. Grammatical construction should not be 
studied for its own sake; the teacher should discuss the 
choice of words and the make-up of the sentences solely 
from the point of view of effect. What words are exact 
in their picture-making power, such as force us to see 
what the poet sees and precisely as he sees it? What 
words, on the other hand, are indeterminate, suggestive, 
stimulating our own imaginations, so that we make the 
picture for ourselves out of our own experience? How 
does the form of the verse respond to the mood it ex- 
presses? With more advanced students the teacher might 
analyze the music of the verse, touching upon the more 
general principles of "tone-color," wherein a certain higher 
expressiveness is won by the quality of the consonant and 
vowel sounds. The nature and number of such details as 
I have here hinted at may be safely left to the discretion 
of the teacher, provided that he have before him constantly 
the fundamental principle in the study of literature, that 
poetry should be read to be appreciated and enjoyed; for 
a poem fails of being poetry in so far as it fails of com- 
municating pleasure. 



VIII. examikatio:n^ questions 

1. Tell briefly the entire story of the The Ancient Mariner. 

2. Relate in full one of the following episodes: — 

a. The mariner and the wedding-guest, 
h. The voyage until the albatross appears, 
c. The albatross. 



EXAMINATION QUESTIONS Ixiii 

d. The experiences of the mariners from the shooting of the 

albatross to the appearance of the spectre- ship. 

e. The spectre-ship. 

/, The mariner's experiences until he blesses the "creatures 

of the great calm." 
g. The navigation of tlie ship by the dead men. 
h. The Two Voices. 
i. The awakening from the trance. 
j. The arrival in the home harbor. 

k. The rescue of the mariner by the hermit and the pilot. 
I. The fate of the ship. 
m. The mariner's after experiences. 

3. Discuss the poet's method of telling the story. 

4. Restate briefly all the descriptions of landscape and country in the 

poem. 

5. Restate briefly all the descriptions of the sea. 

6. Describe in detail — 

a. The Ancient Mariner. 

b. The ship driven by the storm-blast. 

c. The sea in the regions of the south pole. 

d. The calm. 

e. The spectre-ship and her crew. 

/. The sea after the mariner alone survives. 
g. The home harbor. 

7. Discuss the poet's method of description. 

8. What was the religion of the Ancient Mariner ? 

9. What customs are referred or alluded to which no longer 

exist ? 
10. What indications are there as to the geography and the period of 

the poem ? 
LI. Compare the gloss with the poem itself in substance. 
L2. Hdw far does the gloss contribute to the effect of Hie Ancient 
Mariner as a whole ? 
Why is the motto from Burnet appropriate ? Explain fully. 
What in the j)oem is strictly supernatural ? 
Does it seem real to you ? Why ? 
Discuss the form of the poem. 
Discuss the metre. 
Compare The Ancient Mariner with an old ballad, for example, 

Sir Patrick Spens. 
Tell the story of the composition of the poem. 



Ixiv INTRODUCTION 

20. What do you conceive to have been Wordsworth's share, both in 

direct contribution and in influence on Coleridge ? 

21. What materials did the poet use in writing it ? 

22. Is there anything similar to The Ancient Mariner in literature, 

either in spirit or in form ? 

23. What is the relation of the poem to the other literature of the time ? 

24. What do you think was the poet's purpose in writing The Ancient 

Mariner f 

25. What is the obvious moral of the poem ? 

26. Are the moral and the purpose here the same ? 

27. AVhat does the poem mean to you ? 



IX. CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY 

I. LlFE^ 

1772. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born in Ottery St. Mary, Devon, 
21st October. 

1781. Death of his father, 4th October. 

1782. Entered at Christ's Hospital, 18th July. 

1791. Discharged from Christ's Hospital, 7th September. 

Goes into residence at Jesus College, Cambridge, October. 

1793. Enlisted in King's Regiment of Light Dragoons, December. 

1794. Discharged from the army, April. 

Visit to Oxford and meeting with Southey, June. 

" Pantisocracy," Autumn. 

Leaves Cambridge finally, December, 

1795. Settled at Bristol, lecturing and writing. 
Married to Sarah Fricker, 4tli October. 

1796. First edition of poems published, April. 

Issue of the Watchman, 1st March to 13th May. 
Birth of Hartley Coleridge, 19th September. 
Settled at Nether Stowey, December. 

1797. Settlement of the Wordsworths at Alfoxden, July. 
The Ancient Mariner begun, 13th November. 
First part of Christabel begun. 

1 I have followed "here substantially the Table in the Letters edited 
by E. H. Coleridge. 



CHRONOLOGICAL SURVEY Ixv 

1798. Accepts annuity of one hundred and fifty pounds from 

Josiali and Thomas Wedgwood, January. 
Goes to Germany, September. 

1799. Returns from Germany, July. 

Begins to write for Morning Post, December. 

1800. Translation of Schiller's Wallenstein, Spring. 
Birth of Derwent Coleridge, 14th September. 
Second part of Christabel, Autumn. 

1802. Birth of Sara Coleridge, 23d December. 

1804. Journey to Malta. 

1806. Residence in Rome, January to May. 

Returns to England, August. 
1808. First lecture at Royal Institution, 12th January. 
1809-10. The Friend. 

1813. Production of Remorse at Drury Lane, 23d January. 
1816. Settles with Mr. Gillman at Highgate, 16th April. 
1834. Death, 25th July. 

II. Works ^ 



1. Fall of Robespierre, 1794 (first act by Coleridge). 

2. Moral and Political Lecture delivered at Bristol, 1795. 

3. Conciones ad Populum, 1795. 

4. The Plot discovered, in an address to the people against 

ministerial treason, 1795 (3 and 4 in Essays on His Own 
Times). 

5. The Watchman. (Ten numbers, 1st March to 13th May, 1796.) 

6. Poems on Various Subjects, 1796. (Three Sonnets by Charles 

Lamb.) Second edition in 1797, with poems by C. Lamb 
and C. Lloyd. Third edition in 1803, omitting Lloyd's and 
Lamb's poems. 

7. Destiny of Nations. (Originally contributed to Southey's Joan 

of Arc ; republished under this title, with alterations, in 1828 
and 1834. Original form in Cottle's Early Recollections, 
Appendix.) 

8. Ode to the Departing Year. (Cambridge Intelligencer, 31st 

December, 1796, and separately, 1796.) 

1 For this Table I am indebted in the main to the article on Coleridge 
by Leslie Stephen, in the Dictionary of National Biography. 



Ixvi INTRODUCTION 

9. The Ancient Mariner, in Lyrical Ballads, 1798. 

10. Fears in Solitude (previously in Morning Post) ; France, an 

Ode (previously as Recantation in Morning Post) ; Frost at 
Midnight; 1798. 

11. Poems in Annual Anthology for 1800. 

12. Wallenstein, 1800. 

13. The Friend, a Literary, Moral, and Political Journal, exclud- 

ing personal and party topics and the events of the day; 27 
parts, 1st June, 1809, to 15th March, 1810. Reissued 1812. 
New and greatly altered edition, 1818. 

14. Remorse, a Tragedy, 1813 (three editions). Osorio, as written 

in 1797, was published in 1873. 

15. Essays on the Fine Arts in Felix Farley's Journal, 1814. 

16. Christabel, with Kubla Khan and Pains of Sleep, 1816. 

17. Sibylline Leaves (chiefly republications), 1817. 

18. Zapolya, a Christmas Tale, 1817. 

19. Biographia Literaria, 1817. Second edition with notes by 

Henry Nelson and Sara Coleridge in 1847. 

20. Aids to Reflection in the Formation of a Manly Character, etc., 

1825. 

21. On the Constitution of Church and State, 1830. 

Posthumously published were : — 

1. Specimens of his Table Talk. By Henry Nelson Coleridge, 

1835. Later republished with Omniana and Other Frag- 
ments, by T. Ashe, in 1884. 

2. Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit. Edited by Henry Nelson 

Coleridge, 1840 ; with notes by Sara Coleridge, 1849. 

3. Literary Remains. Edited by H. N. Coleridge ; Vols. I. and II., 

1836 ; Vols. III. and IV., 1838. 

4. Essay on Method (from Encyclopaedia Metropolitana, dated 

January, 1818), 1845. 

5. Notes and Lectures upon Shakespeare and some" of the Old 

Dramatists. Edited by Sara Coleridge. 2 vols. 1849. 

6. Notes upon English Divines. Edited by Derwent Coleridge. 

2 vols. 1853. 

7. Essays on His Own Times. Edited by Sara Coleridge. 3 vols. 

1850. (Early pamphlets and contributions to the Morning 
Post and Courier in prose and verse.) 



J 



BIBLIOGRAPHY ixvii 

8^ Lectures on Shakespeare, from notes by J. P. Collier, 1875. 
9. Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare and other English Poets. 
Brought together by T. Ashe, 1885. 

10. Aninia Poetse, from the Unpublished Note-books of S. T. C. 

Edited by E. H. Coleridge, 1895. 

11. Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited by E. H. Cole- 

ridge. 2 vols. 1895. 

Collected Editions 

First collected edition of Poetical and Dramatic Works, published 
by Coleridge himself, 1828. 

Revised issue, 1829. 

Second edition, by H. N. Coleridge, 1834. 
The Poetical and Dramatic Works of S. T. C, with a life of the 
author. London, 1836. 12mo. 

Another edition, with a Memoir. Edited by Sara and D. 
Coleridge. 3 vols. Boston, 185i. 

Another edition, founded on the author's latest edition of 1834, 
with many additional pieces now first included, and with a 
collection of various readings. Edited by R. H. Shepherd. 
4 vols. London, 1877. 

Another edition. Poetical and Dramatic AVorks. 4 vols. 
London, 1880. A reissue of the preceding, published by Mac- 
millan, with a sup]3lement to Vol. II. 
The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited with a 
Biographical Introduction by James Dykes Campbell. Lon- 
don and New York : Macmillan and Co., 1893. Founded on 
the edition of 1829 as the last upon which Coleridge " was 
able to bestow personal care and attention." 
The Complete Works of S. T. Coleridge, with an introductory 
essay upon his philosophical and theological opinions. Edited 
by Professor Shedd. 7 vols. New l^ork, 1853. 

X. BIBLIOGRAPHY 

For a thorough study of Coleridge the biography by J. Dykes 
Campbell is indispensable : published as a Memoir introductory to 
the Poetical Works of Coleridge, Macmillan, 1893; reissued as 



Ixviii INTRODUCTION 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a Narrative of the Events of His Life, 
1894. Comprehensive biographies are those by H. D. Traill (Eng- 
lish Men of Letters Series) and Hall Caine (Great Writers Series). 
The latter contains a full bibliography (up to 1887) compiled by 
J. P. Anderson of the British Museum. Briefer accounts are those 
by Leslie Stephen in the Dictionary of National Biography — also 
with bibliography — and by Rossetti in Lives of the Famous Poets. 
A scholarly and stimulating study of Coleridge as a poet is the 
Life by Professor A. Brandl, translated by Lady Eastlake. For 
original material one should turn to the Biographia Literaria, and 
to the Letters of Coleridge (2 vols., 1895), selected especially to 
illustrate the story of the writer's life. 

Contemporaries who have left records, portraits, sketches, remi- 
niscences of Coleridge are Wordsworth, Southey, Lamb, Cottle, 
Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Gillman, Carlyon, Carlyle. 

Recent essays which the student will find significant are those by 
Stopford Brooke, Golden Book of Coleridge, Theology in the Eng- 
lish Poets ; Dowden, New Studies in Literature ; Swinburne, Essays 
and Studies ; William Watson, Excursions in Criticism ; J C. 
Shairp, Studies in Poetry ; Pater, Appreciations ; Lowell, De- 
mocracy and Other Addresses; Richard Garnett, Poetry of Cole- 
ridge; Mrs. Oliphant, Literary History of England, Vol. I.; Leslie 
Stephen, Hours in a Library, Vol. HI.; J. M. Robertson, New 
Essays towards a Critical Method. Poole's Index may be consulted 
for magazine articles. 




" By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, 
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ? " 



THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 



IN SEVEN PAETS 



Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum 
universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et 
gradus et cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera? Quid agunt? 
quae loca habitant? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium 
humanum, nunquam attigit. Juvat, interea, uon diffiteor, quandoque in 
animo, tanquam in Tabula, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contem- 
plari : ne mens assuefacta hodiernae vitse minutiis se contrahat nimis, et 
tota subsidat in pusillas cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilandum 
est, modusque servandus, ut certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus. 
— T. Burnet: Arch^ol. Phil,, p. 68. 

ARGUMENT 

How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by Storms to the cold 
Country towards the South Pole ; and how from thence she made her 
course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean ; and of the 
strange things that befell ; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere 
came back to his own Country. [1798.] 



. PART THE FIRST 
/ f 

It is an ancient Manner, . An ancient 

AMHest'oppethoAeofthree. . , , 3*1^76:1' 

" By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, lants bidden 

" Now wherefore stopp'st thou me ? ^^ ^ wedding- 
feast, and de- 



" The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide, 

" And I am next of kin ; 
"The guests are met, the feast is set : 

''May'st hear the merry din." 

1 



taineth one. 



THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 

He holds him with his skinny hand, 
10 " There was a ship," quoth he. 

" Hold off ! unhand me, grey-beard loon ! " 
Eftsoons his hand dropt he. 



The wedding- 
guest is spell- 
bound by the 
eye of the old 
sea-faring 
man, and con- 
strained to 
hear his tale. 



15 



He holds him with his glittering eye — 
The wedding-guest stood still. 

And listens like a three-years child : 
The Mariner hath his will. 



The wedding-guest sat on a stone : 

He cannot chuse but hear ; 
And thus spake on that ancient man, 
20 The bright-eyed mariner. 



The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, 

Merrily did we drop 
Below the kirk, below the hill, 

Below the lighthouse top. 



The Mariner 
tells how the 
ship sailed 
southward 
with a good 
wind and fair 
weather, till 
it reached the 
line. 



The wedding- 
guest heareth 
the bridal 
music ; but the 
mariner con- 
tin ueth his 
tale. 



25 The Sun came up upon the left. 
Out of the sea came he ! 
And he shone bright, and on the right 
Went down into the sea. 

Higher and higher every day, 
30 Till over the mast at noon — 

The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast. 
For he heard the loud bassoon. 

The bride hath paced into the hall, 
Red as a rose is she ; 
35 Nodding their heads before her goes 
The merry minstrelsy. 




The bride hath paced into the hall ; 
Red as a rose is she. 



\^^'\ 



\^--\ 



PART THE FIRST 



The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast, 

Yet he cannot chuse but hear ; 
And thus spake on that ancient man^ 
40 The bright-eyed Mariner. 

And now the storm-blast came, and he 

Was tyrannous and strong : 
He struck with his o'ertaking wings, 

And chased us south along. 

45 With sloping masts and dipping prow, 
As^who pursued with yell and blow 
Still treads the shadow of his foe 

And forward bends his head. 
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, 

50 And southward aye we fled. 

And now there came both mist and snow 

And it grew wondrous cold : 
And ice, mast-high, came floating by. 

As green as emerald. 

55 And through the drifts the snowy clifts 
Did send a dismal sheen : 
[ Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken — 
The ice was all between. 

The ice was here, the ice was there, 
60 The ice was all around : 

It cracked and growled, and roared and 
howled, 
Like noises in a swound ! 



At length did cross an Albatross 
Thorough the fog it came ; 

As if it had been a Christian soul 
We hailed it in God's name. 



The ship 
drawn by a 
storm toward 
the south pole. 



'■) 



The land of 
ice, and of 
fearful 

sounds, where 
no living 
thing- was to 
be seen. 



Till a great 
sea-bird, 
called the 
Albatross, 
came through 
the snow-fog, 
and was re- 
ceived with 
great joy and 
hospitality. 



THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 



It ate the food it ne'er had eat, 
And round and round it flew. 
The ice did split with a thunder-fit ; 
70 The hehnsman steered us through! 



^ 



And lo ! the 
Albatross 
proveth a bird 
of good omen, 
and followeth 
the ship as it 
returned 
northward, 
through fog 
and floating 



75 



And a good south wind\ sprung up behind ; 

The Albatross did foll^^ r 

And every day, for food o*iipiS^|^ 

Came to the mariner's hollo ! "^ 

\^.. ■' 

In mist or cloud, on mast or phroud. 

It perched for jvesjfers nine ; 
Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke whitp. 

Glimmered the white Moon-shine. 



The ancient 
Mariner in- 
hospitably 
killeth the 
pious bird of 
good omen. 



" God save thee, ancient Mariner ! 
80 From the fiends, that plague thee thus ! — 
Why look'st thou so ? " — With my cross-bow 
I shot the Albatross. 



PART THE SECOND. 



85 



The Sun now rose upon the right : 

Out of the sea came he, 
Still hid in mist, and on the left 

Went down into the sea. 



And the good south wind still blew behind. 

But no^sweet bird did follow. 
Nor any day for food or play 

Came to the mariners' hollo ! 



PART THE SECOND 



^ 



And I had done an hellish thing, 
And it would work 'em woe : 

For all averred, I had killed the bird 
That made the breeze to blow. 
95 Ah wretch ! said they, the bird to slay. 
That made the breeze to blow ! 



His ship- 
mates cry out 
against the 
ancient Marl-- 
ner, for kill- 
ing the bird of 
good luck. 



leo 



Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, 

The glorious Sun n prist : 
Then all averred, I had killed the bird 

That brought the fog and mist. 
'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay. 

That bring the fog and mist. 



But when the 
fog cleared 
off, they 
justify the 
same, and 
thus make 
themselves 
accomplices 
in the crime. 



The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, 
The furrow followed free ; 
105 We were the first that ever burst 
Into that silent sea. 

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 

'Twas sad as sad could be; 
And we did speak only to break 
110 The silence of the sea ! 



The fair 
breeze con- 
tinues ; the 
ship enters 
the Pacific 
Ocean and 
sails north- 
ward, even 
till it reaches 
the Line. 
The ship hatli 
suddenly been 
becalmed. 



All in a hot^nd copper sky. 
The bloody Sun, at noon, 

Right up above the mast did stand. 
No bigger than the Moon. 



115 Day after day, day after day, 

We stuck, nor breath nor motion ; 
As idle as a painted ship 
Upon a painted ocean. 



THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 



And the Al- 
batross begins 
to be av€ 



Water, water, every where, 
120 And all the boards did shrink 
Water, water, every where, 
Nor any drop to drink. 



A spirit had 
followed 
them ; one of 
the invisible 
inhabitants of 
this planet, 
neither de- 
parted souls 
nor angels ; 
concerning 
Avhom the 
learned Jew, 
Josephus, 
and the Pla- 
tonic Constan- 
tinopolitan, 
Michael Psel- 
lus, may be 
consulted. 
They are very 
numerous, 
and there is 
■ no climate or 
element with- 
out one or 
more. 
The ship- 
mates, in 
their sore dis- 
tress, would 
fain throw 
the whole 
guilt on the 
ancient Mari- 
ner : in sign 
whereof they 
hang the dead 
sea-bird round 
his neck. 



The very deep did rot : Christ ! 
That ever this should be ! 
125 Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs 
Upon the slimy sea. 



About, about, in reel and rout 

The death-fires danced at night ; 
The water, like a witch's oils, 
130 Burnt green, and blue and white. 



And some in dreams assured were 
Of the sx^irit that plagued us so ; 

Nine fathom deep he had followed us 
From the land of mist and snow. 



135 And every tongue, through utter drought. 
Was withered at the root ; 
We could not speak, no more than if 
We had been choked with soot. 



Ah ! well a-day ! what evil looks 
140 Had I from old and young ! 
Instead of the cross, the Albatross 
About my neck was hung. 



PART THE THIRD 



PART THE THIRD. 



There passed a weary time. Each throat 
Was parched, and glazed each eye. 
145 A weary time ! a weary time ! 
How glazed each weary eye, 

When looking westward, I beheld 
A something in the sky. 

At first it seemed a little speck, 
150 And then it seemed a mist ; 

It moved and moved, and took at last 
A certain shape, I wist. 

A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist ! 
And still it neared and neared : 
155 As if it dodged a water-sprite. 

It plunged and tacked and veered. 



The ancient 
Mariner be- 
holdeth a sign 
in the element 
afar off. 









With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, 

We could nor laugh nor wail ; 
Through utter drought all dumb we stood I 
160 I bit^my arm, I sucked the blood. 

And cried, A sail ! a sail ! 

With throats unslaked, with black lips baked 

Agape they heard me call : 
Gramercy! they for joy did grin, 
165 And all at once their breath drew in. 

As they were drinking all. 

See ! See ! (I cried) she tacks no more ! 

Hither to work us weal ; 
Without a breeze, without a tide, 
170 She steadies with upright keel I 



At its nearer 
approach, it 
seemeth liira 
to be a ship ; 
and at a dear 
ransom he 
freeth his 
speech from 
the bonds of 
thirst. 



A flash of joy. 



And horror 
follows. For 
can it be a 
ship that 
comes onward 
without wind 
or tide ? 



THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 

The western wave was all a-flame. 

The day was well-nigh done ! 
Almost upon the western wave 

Eested the broad bright Sun ; 
175 When that strange shape drove suddenly 

Betwixt us and the Sun. 



It seemeth 
him but the 
skeleton of a 
sliip. 



And straight the Sun was flecked with bars, 

(Heaven's Mother send us grace !) 
As if through a dungeon-grate he peered 
180 With broad and burning face. 



>^' 






And its ribs 
are seen as 
bars on the 
face of the set- 
ting Sun. 
The spectre- 
woman and 
her death- 
mate, and no 
other on 
board the 
skeleton ship- 
Like vessel, 
like crew ! 

Death and 

LlFE-IN- 

Death have 
diced for the 
ship's crew, 
and she (the 
latter) win- 
neth the an- 
cient Mariner. 



<\\ Alas ! (thought I, and my heart beat loud) 
How fast she nears and nears ! 
Are those lier sails that glance in the Sun, 
Like restless gossameres ! 

1 

185 Are those lier ribs through which the Sun 
Did peer, as through a grate ? 

And is that W^onian all her crew ? 

Is that a Death ? and are there two ? 
Is Death that woman's mate ? 

190 Her lips were red, lier looks were free. 
Her locks were yellow as gold : 
Her skin was as white as leprosy, 
The Night-Mare Life-in-Death was she, 
Who thicks man's blood with cold. 



195 The naked hulk alongside came. 

And the twain were casting dice ; 
" The game is done ! I've won ! I've won ! 
Quoth she, and whistles thrice. 



PART THE THIRD 



The Sun's rim dips ; the stars rush out : 
200 At one stride comes the Dark ; 
With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea, 
Off shot the spectre-bark. 



No twilight 
withiu the 
courts of the 
sun. 



We listened and looked sideways up ! 
Fear at my heart, as at a cup, - 
205 My life-blood seemed to sip ! 

The stars were dim, and thick the night. 
The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed 
white ', 
From the sails the dew did drip — - 
Till clomb above the eastern bar 
210 The horned Moon, with one bright star 
Within the nether tip. 

One after one, by the star-dogged Moon, 

Too quick for groan or sigh 
Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, 
215 And cursed me with his eye. 



At the rising 
of the Moon, 



One after - * ^- 
another, 



Four times fifty living men, 

(And I heard nor sigji nor groan) 

With heavy thump, a lifeless lump. 
They dropped down one by one. 



His shipmates 
drop down 
dead : 



220 The souls did from their bodies fly, - 
They fled to bliss or woe ! 
And every soul, it passed me by. 
Like the whizz of my ckoss-bow ! 



But LlFB-IN- 

Death begins 
her work on 
the ancient 
Mariner. 



10 



THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 



PART THE FOURTH 



The wedding- 
guest feareth 
that a Spirit 
is talking to 
him : 



" I fp:ar thee, ancient Mariner ! 
225 I fear thy skinny hand ! 

And thou art long, and lank, and brown, 
As is the ribbed sea-sand. 



But the an- 
cient Mariner 
assureth him 
of his bodily- 
life, and pro- 
ceedeth to 
relate his hor- 
rible penance, 



I fear thee and thy glittering eye, 
And thy skinny hand, so brown." — 
230 Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest ! 
This body dropt not down. 

Alone, alone, all, all alone, 

Alone on a wide wide sea ! 
And never a saint took pity on 
235 My soul in agony. 



He despiseth 
the creatures 
of the calm. 



The many men ^ so beautiful ! 

And they all dead did lie : 
And a thousand thousand slimy things 

Lived on ; and so did I. 



And envieth 
that they 
should live, 
and so many 
lie dead. 



240 I looked upon the rotting sea. 
And drew my eyes away ; 
I looked upon the rotting deck, 
And there the dead men lay. 



I looked to Heaven, and tried to pray; 
245 But or ever a prayer had guslit, 
A wicked whisper came, and made 
My heart as dry as dust. 



o r 



O <r+ 



> c 






^ o 

3 re 
(r5 h. 





And never a saint took pity on 
My soul in agony. 



PART THE FOURTH 



11 



I closed ]ny lids, and kept them close, 
And the balls like pulses beat ; 
250 For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the 

sky __ ^ 

Lay like a load on my weary eye, l:^^{ ^"^ 
And the dead were at my feet. 



^t^ 



The cold sweat melted from their limbs, 
Nor rot nor reek did they : 
255 The look with which they looked on me 
Had never passed away. 

An orphan's curse would drag to Hell 

A spirit from on high ; 
But oh ! more horrible than that 
260 Is a curse in a dead man's eye ! 

Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, 

And yet I could not die. 

The moving Mooii went up the sky. 
And no where did abide : 
265 Softly she was going up. 

And a star or two beside — 

Her beams bemocked the sultry main. 
Like April hoar-frost spread ; 

But where the ship's huge shadow lay, 
270 The charmed water burnt alway 
A still and awful red. 

Beyond the shadow of the ship, 

I watched the water-snakes : 
They moved in tracks of shining white, 
275 And when they reared, the elfish light 
Fell off in hoary flakes. 






But the curse 
liveth for him 
in the eye of 
the dead men. 

In his loneli- 
ness and fixed- 
ness he yearn- 
eth towards 
the journeying 
M^r, and the 
stars that still 
sojourn, yet 
still move on- 
ward ; and 
everywhere 
the hlue sky 
belongs to 
them, and is 
their ap- 
pointed rest, 
and their jia- 
tive country 
and their own 
natural 
homes, which 
they enter 
unannounced, 
as lords that 
are certainly 
expected and 
yet there is a 
silent joy at 
their arrival. 
By the light of 
the Moon he 
heholdeth 
God's crea- 
tures of the 
great calm 



12 



THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 



Within the shadow of the ship 
I watched their rich attire : 

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, 
280 They coiled and swam ; and every track 
Was a flash of golden fire. 



Their beauty 
and their 
happiness. 



He blesseth 
them in his 
heart. 

The spell 
begins to 
break. 



r(j happy living things ! no tongue 
TKeif beauty might declare : 
A spring of Joye gushed from my heart, 
285 And I blessed them unaware : 
Sure my kind saint took pity on me. 
And I blessed them unaware. 

The selfsame moment I could pray ; 
And from my neck so free 
290 The Albatross fell off, and sank 
Like lead into the sea. 



PART THE FIFTH 



Oh sleep ! it is a gentle thing, 
Beloved from pole to pole ! 

To Mary Queen the praise be given ! 
295 She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, 
That slid into my soul. 



By grace ot 
the holy 
Mother, the 
ancient Mari- 
ner is re- 
freshed with 
rain. 



>. 



C^^ 



The silly buckets on the deck. 

That had so long remained, -'-^ 

I dreamt that they were filled with dew 
300 AnB^ when I awoke, it rained. 



—iX^ 



My lips were wet, my throat was cold. 
My garments all were dank ; 

Sure I had drunken in my dreams, 
And still my body drank. 



PART THE FIFTH 



13 



f^\ 



305 I moved, and could not feel my limbs 
I was so light — almost 
I thought that I had died in sleep, 
And was a blessed ghost. 

And soon I heard a roaring wind : 
310 It did not come anear ; 

But with its sound it shook the sails, 
That were so thin and sere. 



The upper air burst into life ! 
And a hundred fire-flags sheen, 
315 To and fro they were hurried about ! 
And to and fro, and in and out, 
The wan stars danced between. 



And the coming wind did roar more loud, 
And the sails did sigh like sedge ; 
320 And the rain poured down from one black 
cloud ; 
The Moon was at its edsje. 



The thick black cloud was cleft, and still 

The Moon was at its side : 
Like waters shot from some high crag, 
325 The lightning fell with never a jag, 

A river steep and wide. 



He hearetli 
sounds and 
seeth strange 
sights and 
commotions 
in the sky and 
the element. 



The loud wind never reached the ship. 

Yet now the ship moved on ! 
Beneath the lightning and the moon 
330 The dead men gave a groan. 



The bodies ol 
the ship's 
crew are in- 
spired, and 
the ship 
moves on ; 



14 



THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 



They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, 
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes ; 

It had been strange, even in a dream, 
To have seen those dead men rise. 



335 The helmsman steered, the ship moved on; 
Yet never a breeze upblew ; 
The mariners all 'gan work the ropes. 

Where they were wont to do ; 
They raised their limbs like lifeless tools — 
340 We were a ghastly crew. 

The body of my brother's son 

Stood by me, knee to knee : 
The body and I pulled at one rope. 

But he said nought to me. 



But not by 
the souls of 
the men, nor 
by dfemons 
of earth or 
middle air, 
but by a 
blessed troop 
of angelic 
spirits, sent 
down by the 
invocation of 
the guardian 
saint. 



345 " I fear thee, ancient Mariner ! " 

Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest ! 
'Twas not those souls that fled in pain. 
Which to their corses came again. 

But a troop of spirits blest : 

350 For when it dawned — they dropped their 
arms, 
And clustered round the mast; 
Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths. 
And from their bodies passed. 



Around, around, flew each sweet sound, 
355 Then darted to the Sunj \i u..^ 
Slowly the sounds came back again. 
Now mixed, now one by one. 




But why drives on that ship so fast, 
Without or wave or wind ? 



PART THE FIFTH 



15 



Sometimes a-droi^ping from the sky 
I heard the sky-lark sing ; 
360 Sometimes all little birds that are, 

How they seemed to fill the sea and air 
With their sweet jargoning ! 

And now 'twas like all instruments, 
Now like a lonely flute ; 
305 And now it is an angel's song, 

That makes the Heavens be mute. 

It ceased ; yet still the sails made on 
A pleasant noise till noon, 

A noise like of a hidden brook 
370 In the leafy month of June, 

That to the sleeping woods all night 
Singeth a quiet tune. 

Till noon we quietly sailed on. 
Yet never a breeze did breathe : 
375 Slowly and smoothly went the ship, 

Moved onward from beneath. 



Under the keel nine fathom deep. 
From the land of mist and snow, 

The spirit slid : and it was he 
380 That made the ship to go. 

The sails at noon left off their tune. 
And the shii^ stood still also. 

The Sun , right up above the mast. 
Had fixed her to the ocean : 
385 But in a minute she 'gan stir, 

With a short uneasy motion — 

Backwards and forwards half her length, 
With a short uneasy motion. 



The lonesome 
spirit from 
the south-pole 
carries on the 
ship as far as 
the line, in 
obedience to 
the angelic 
troop, but still 
requireth 
vengeance. 



16 



THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 



The Polar 
Spirit's 
fellow 

dsemons, the 
invisible in- 
habitants of 
the element, 
take part in 
his wrong ; 
and two of 
them relate, 
one to the 
other, that 
penance long 
and heavy for 
the ancient 
Mariner hath 
been accorded 
to the Polar 
Spirit, who 
returneth 
southward. 



Then like a pawing horse let go, 
390 She made a sudden bound : 
It flung the blood into my head, 
And I fell down in a swound. 

How long in that same fit I lay, 

1 have not to declare ; 
395 But ere my living life returned, 
I heard and in my soul discerned 

Two VOICES in the air. 

'' Is it he ? " quoth one, " Is this the man ? 
By him who died on cross, 
400 With his cruel bow he laid full low 
The harmless Albatross. 

The spirit who bideth by himself 

In the land of mist and snow, 
He loved the bird that loved the man 
405 Who shot him with his bow." 

The other was a softer voice. 

As soft as honey -dew : 
Quoth he, " The man hath penance done, 

And penance more will do." 



PART THE SIXTH 
FIRST VOICE 



410 But tell me, tell me ! speak again, 
Thy soft response renewing — 
What makes the ship drive on so fast ? 
What IS the ocean doing ? 



PART THE SIXTH 



17 



SECOND VOICE 

Still as a slave before his lord, 
415 The OCEAN hath no blast ; 

His great bright eye most silently 
Up to the Moon is cast — 



lU 



y^ 




ly 



ix- 






If he may know which way to go ; 
For she gmdes him smooth or grim. 
420 See, brother, see ! how graciously 
She looketh down on him. 



FIRST VOICE 



But why drives on that ship so fast. 
Without or wave or wind ? 



SECOND VOICE 

The air is cut away before, 
425 And closes from behind. 

Fly, brother, fly ! more high, more high ! 

Or we shall be belated : 
For slow and slow that ship will go. 

When the Mariner's trance is abated. 



The Mariner 
hath been cast 
into a trance ; 
for the angelic 
power causeth 
the vessel to 
drive north- 
ward faster 
than human 
life could en- 
dure. 



430 I woke, and we were sailing on 
As in a gentle weather : 
'Twas night, calm night, the Moon was high ; 
The dead men stood together: 

All stood together on the deck, 
435 For a charnel-dungeon fitter : 
All fixed on me their stony eyes, 
That in the Moon did glitter. 



The super- 
natural 
motion is re- 
tarded ; the 
Mariner 
awakes, and 
his penance 
begins anew. 



1^^ 

{■''' 



The curse is 
finally ex- 
piated. 



THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 

The pang, the curse, with which they died. 
Had never passed away : 
440 I conld not draw my eyes from theirs, 
Nor turn them up to pray. 

And now tliis spell was snapt : once more 

I viewed the ocean green, 
And looked far forth, yet little saw 
445 Of what had else been seen — ^ 



Like one, that on a lonesome road 
Doth walk in fear and dread, 

And having once turned round walks on, 
And turns no more his head ; 
450 Because he knows, a frightful fiend 
Doth close behind him tread. 

But soon there breathed a wind on me, 

Nor sound nor motion made: 
Its path was not upon the sea, 
455 In ripple or in shade. 

It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek 
Like a meadow-gale of spring — 

It mingled strangely with my fears. 
Yet it felt like a welcoming. 

460 Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship, 
Yet she sailed softly too : 
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze — 
On me alone it blew. 



And the an- 
cient Mariner 
beholdeth his 
native 
country. 



Oh ! dream of joy ! is this indeed 
465 The light-house top I see ? 
Is this the hill ? is this the kirk ? 
Is this mine own countree ? 



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;.f ?:^.^-^:£^.a^?a^;p^ - 



PART THE SIXTH 



19 



470 



We drifted o'er the harbour-bar, 
And I with sobs did pray — 

let me be awake, my God ! 
Or let me sleep alway. 



475 



The harbour-bay was clear as glass, 
So smoothly it was strewn ! 

And on the bay tlie moonlight lay, 
And the shadow of the moon. 



i^^ 



<f 



The rock shone bright, the kirk no less, 

That stands above the rock : 
The moonlight steeped in silentness 

The steady weathercock. 

480 And the bay was white with silent light, The angelic 

Till rising from the same, """' tlil'dead''''' 

Full many shapes, that shadows Avere, bodies, 
In crimson colours came. 



A little distance from the prow 
485 Those crimson shadows were : 

I turned my eyes upon the deck — 
Oh, Christ ! what saw I there ! 

Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat, 
And, by the holy rood ! 
490 A man all light, a seraph-man. 

On every corse there stood. 

This seraph-band, each waved his hand 

It was a heavenly sight I 
They stood as signals to the land, 
495 Each one a lovely light ; 



And appear in 
their own 
forms of light. 



W 



d 



k^ 



a^>^ 






20 THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 

This seraph-band, each waved his hand, 
No voice did they impart — 

No voice ; but oh ! the silence sank 
Like music on my heart. 

500 But soon I heard the dash of oars, 
I heard the Pilot's cheer ; 
My head was turned perforce away, 
And I saw a boat appear. 

The Pilot and the Pilot's boy, 
505 I heard them coming fast : 

Dear Lord in Heaven ! it was a joy 
The dead men could not blast. 

I saw a third — I heard his voice : ' 

It is the Hermit good ! 
510 He singeth loud his godly hymns 

That he makes in the wood. 
He'll shrieve my soul, he'll wash away 

The Albatross's blood. 



PART THE SEVENTH 



the Wood, 



The Hermit of This Hermit good lives in that wood 

515 Which slopes down to the sea. 
How loudly his sweet voice he rears ! 
He loves to talk with marineres 
That come from a far countree. 






He kneels at morn, and noon and eve 
620 He hath a cushion plump : 
^ It is the moss that wholly hides 

^r^ J^ .^__ The rotted old oak-stump. 



'^ 



PART THE SEVENTH 21 

The skiff-boat neared : I heard them talk, 
" Why this is strange, I trow ! 
25 Where are those lights so many and fair, 
That signal made but now ? " 

" Strange, by my faith ! "the Hermit said — Approacheth 
" And they answered not our cheer ! the ship with 

The planks looked warped! and see those ^^o^^er. 
sails, 
30 How thin they are and sere ! 
I never saw aught like to them, 
Unless perchance it were 

Brown skeletons of leaves that lag 
My forest-brook along ; 
i35 When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow, 
And the owlet whoops to the wolf below, 
That eats the she-wolf's young." 

" Dear Lord ! it hath a fiendish look — 
(The Pilot made reply) 
i40 I am a-f eared." — " Push on, push on ! " 
Said the Hermit cheerily. 

The boat came closer to the ship, 

But I nor spake nor stirred ; 
The boat came close beneath the ship, 
M5 And straight a sound was heard. 

Under the water it rumbled on, The ship sud- 

Still louder and more dread : ^^^^^ '^^^^^^• 

It reached the ship, it split the bay j 
The ship went down like lead. 



22 



THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 



The ancient 
Mariner is 
saved in tlie 
Pilot's boat. 



550 Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound, 
Which sky and ocean smote, 
Like one that hath been seven days drowned 

My body lay afloat ; 
But swift as dreams, myself I found 
555 Within the Pilot's boat. 



Upon the whirl, where sank the ship, 
The boat spun round and round ; 

And all was still, save that the hill 
Was telling of the sound. 

560 I moved my lips — the Pilot shrieked 
And fell down in a fit ; 
The holy Hermit raised his eyes, 
And prayed where he did sit. 



I took the oars : the Pilot's boy, 
565 Who now doth crazy go, 

Laughed loud and long, and all the while 

His eyes went to and fro. 
" Ha, ha ! " quoth he, " full plain I see. 
The Devil knows how to row." 



Tlie ancient 
Mariner ear- 
nestly en- 
treateth the 
Hermit to 
shrieve him ; 
and the pen- 
ance of life 
falls on him. 



570 And now, all in my own countree, 
I stood on the firm land ! 
The Hermit stepped forth from the boat, 
And scarcely he could stand. 

"0 shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!" 
575 The Hermit crossed his brow. 

" Say quick," quoth he, " I bid thee say - 
What manner of man art thou ? " 



J 



ip^ 



FAUT THE SEVENTH 



Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched 
With a woeful agony, 
580 Which forced me to begin my tale ; 
And then it left me free. 



23 



Since then, at an uncertain hour. 

That ag^ny returns : 
And till my ghastly tale is told, 
585 This heart within me burns. jC^ 



I pass, like nigh^ from land to land , 

I have strange power of speech ; 
That moment that his face I see, 
I know^ the man that must hear me : 
590 To him my tale I teach. 

^^ •^ 

(jj What loud uproar bursts from that door ! 
The wedding-guests are there : 
Biit in the garden-bower the bride 
"And bride-maids singing are : 
595 And hark the little vesper bell. 
Which biddeth me to prayer ! 



And ever and 
anon through- 
out his future 
life an agony 
constraineth 
him to travel 
from laud to 
land, 



K" 






^^^: --< 



& 



Wedding-Guest ! this soul hath been 

Alone on a wide wide sea : 
So lonely 'twas, that God himself 
600 Scarce seemed there to be. 



sweeter than the marriage-feast, 

'Tis sweeter far to me, 
To walk together to the kirk 

With a goodly company ! — 




0.^ 



^ 






^1 



24 



THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER 



And to teach, 
by his own ex- 
ample, love 
and reverence 
to all things 
that God made 
and loveth. 



605 To walk together to the kirk, 

And all together pray, 
While each to his great Father bends, 
Old men, and babes, and loving friends, 

And youths and maidens gay ! 

610 Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell 
To thee, thou Wedding-Guest ! 
He prayeth well, who loveth well 
Both man and bird and beast. 

He prayeth best, who loveth best 
615 All things both great and small ; 
}j For the dear God who loveth us. 
He made and loveth all. 



The Mariner, whose eye is bright. 
Whose beard with age is hoar, 
620 Is gone : and now the Wedding-Guest 
Turned from the bridegroom's door. 



He went like one that hath been stunned, 

And is of sense forlorn : 
A sadder and a wiser man, 
625 He rose the morrow morn. 



NOTES 

THE TEXT 

Begun in 1797, The Ancient Mariner was finished in March, 1798, 
if the following note in Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal refers, as 
is probable, to this poem. "March 23, 1798 — Coleridge dined 
with us. He brought his ballad finished." 

The Ancient Mariner was first printed anonymously as the open- 
ing poem in the first edition of Lyrical Ballads m 1798 with the 
title, The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere, in Secen Parts. It was 
introduced by the Advertisement which Wordsworth later expanded 
into his famous prefaces, and by the Argument. In the second 
edition of Lyrical Ballads, 1800, the title was changed to The 
Ancient Mariner; A Poet's Reverie.^ The Argument was differ- 
ently phrased, and the text was much altered. Extreme archaisms 
of spelling and phrase were eliminated, and grotesque details of 
mere horror were struck out. The text of 1798 with the variants 
of 1800 is printed in Appendix B, p. 53. The poem was reprinted 
in the Lyrical Ballads, 1802 and 1805, with the omission of the 
Argument. Its next appearance was in Sibylline Leaves, 1817, with 
a few changes of text and the addition of the motto from Burnett 
and the marginal gloss. After this there were no changes of 
importance. 

The text here printed is taken from the edition of Coleridge's 
Poetical Works published in 1829, "the last upon which he Avas 
able to bestow personal care and attention." 

1 Charles Lamb remarks in a letter to Wordsworth (January, 1801)^ " I 
am sorry that Coleridge has chdstened his Ancient Marinere, a Poet's 
Reverie ; it is as bad as Bottom the Weaver's declaration that he is not a 
lion, but only the scenical representation of a lion. What new idea is 
gained by this title but one subversive of all credit — which the tale should 
force upon us — of its truth! " 

25 



26 NOTES 



Translation of the Motto from Burnett 

I readily believe that in the universe are more invisible beings 
than visible. But who will expound to us the nature of them all, 
and their ranks and relationships and distinguishing character- 
istics and the functions of each ? What is it they perform ? What 
regions do they inhabit? Ever about the knowledge of these 
things circles the thought of man, never reaching it. jNIeanwhile 
it is pleasant, I must confess, sometimes to contemplate in the 
mind, as in a picture, the image of this greater and better world : 
that the mind, accustomed to the little things of daily life, may 
not be narrowed overmuch and lose itself in trivial reflections. 
But meanwhile must we diligently seek after truth, maintaining 
just measure, that we may distinguish things certain from uncer- 
tain, day from night. 

THE POEM 

Rime. In its more familiar meaning, a word answering in 
sound to another word. Here used in the sense of a met- 
rical composition, a tale in verse. Rime, derived from 
Anglo-Saxon rtm, is the proper spelling of the word more 
commonly written rhyme. The form rhyme, alternating 
with rhinie, first used about the middle of the sixteenth 
century, arose from its confusion with the Greek word 
rhythm. 

The marginal notes or gloss. Added, according to Words- 
worth, as a "gratuitous afterthought." Such glosses are 
frequently supplied by editors of " texts," such as the old 
ballads, etc.i These notes should be read through once 
continuously, independently of the poem, as a single total 
composition. 
1-4 The four-line stanza, made up of alternating four-stress and 
three-stress verses, is the typical stanza form of the poem ; 
and also in the old ballads it is the form most frequently 
employed. The measure, although typically iambic (the 
iambic foot consists of one unaccented syllable followed by 

1 It is interesting to note that Shelvocke's Voyage is accompanied by a 
gloss. Edition, 1726. 



NOTES 27 

an accented), admits many variations. The first line, with 
a secondary accent on " Mariner," and the fourth are 
strictly iambic ; in the second and third lines notice that 
the first foot is anapaestic (two unaccented syllables fol- 
lowed by an accented). i 

1 It is. The time of the action is not fixed. The poem is at 

once without definite geographical background and with- 
out date. Are there any indications in the poem of the 
mariner's nationality or of the period ? 

Ancient. Note the suggestively indeterminate value of the 
phrase. The seafarer is not merely old in years ; his story 
comes down to us out of an earlier time. The phrase car- 
ries with it suggestions of " old, unhappy, far-off things " ; 
it creates at once an atmosphere. 

Mariner. In the text of 1798, Marinere. The form is retained 
in 1. 517. Notice that the stress of the verse falls on the 
light last syllable. A mark of the genuine ballad manner 
is the " frequent retention of the Middle English accent on 
the final syllable in words like countrie, rivere, and its as- 
sumption by words which never properly had it, such as 
lady, harper, etc." — (Beers, English Romanticism, p. 272 ) 

Cf. " And Ifeir, I feir, my deir master 

That we will cum to harme." — Sir Patrick Spens. 

GuMMERE, Old English Ballads, p. 145. Cf. post, 11. 467, 
^1-8, and 11. 20, 517. Also, Ballad of the Dark Ladie. 

2 Stoppeth. This early form of the third person singular is 

not so archaic as to be puzzling or grotesque, yet on the 
other hand it intensifies the atmosphere of antiquity which 
Coleridge throws about the poem. 
One of three. Some see in the number of wedding-guests a 
mystical significance. Three happens, also, to be the rime- 
word of the stanza. 

3 By thy long grey beard. Coleridge was not satisfied " merely 

witli adopting the old-fashioned, popular forms of art, but 
he added to them all sorts of strange features of his own. 

1 For an explanation and illustration of the various metrical feet, see 
Coleridge's Metrical Feet, Lesson/or a Boy. Written in 1803. 



28 NOTES 

The Ancient Mariner, for example, swears [it is, however, 
the wedding-guest] by his 'grey beard' as if he were a 
Turk." — Brandl, p. 204. 
Glittering eye. It is a common notion that a peculiar light 
or gleam in the eye marks a luan possessed. It is no ordi- 
nary sailor, then, who stops the wedding-guest, and his 
story will be a strange one. It is in keeping with the di- 
rectness in the march of the story that the description of 
the mariner is made wholly incidental to the narrative. 
5-9 The outlandish ness of the mariner and his story is empha- 
sized by the contrast with this picture of home-keeping 
happiness and comfortable festivity. 

7 The guests are met, the feast is set. Note the "internal 
rime," a verse-form frequent in the ballad metre. 

9 Skinny hand. Another indirect descriptive stroke. Notice 
how the poet fixes on the salient and suggestive details. 

10 There was a ship. Note the immediateness, not to say 

bareness, of the narrative ; there are no preliminaries, 
no elaborate introduction. The ship is flashed upon us 
entire and complete, though unadorned by any descriptive 
touches ; and thus unannounced and coming from nowhere, 
it opens vistas of infinite possibilities. 

11 Loon. Originally, stupid fellow, clown. Cf. Macbeth, " The 

devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac'd loon." As used 
by the wedding-guest, it is simply an opprobrious epithet, 
like dolt, fool, etc. 

12 Eftsoons. At once, forthwith. 

13-16 This stanza was furnished by Wordsworth. 

21 The ship was cheered, etc. It is hardly necessary further to 

call attention to the swiftness of the narrative. 

22 Merrily did we drop. Instead of an iambic or an anapsestic 

foot, we have here a dactyl. Notice how in the light move- 
ment of the dactyl the sound of the verse echoes the sense. 

23 Kirk. Is this any clue to the geography of the poem ? Or 

is it only a general name for church? Cf. post, 1. 603. 
What was the religion of the Ancient Mariner ? Collect 
the indications of it throughout the poem. 
Below the kirk, below the hill, etc. Note the successive 
disappearance of landmarks as the ship stands out to sea. 



NOTES 29 

25 The Sun came up upon the left. In what direction was the 
ship sailing? 

28 Went down into the sea. With no pause in the narrative, 
they are now in mid-ocean. 

30 Over the mast at noon. Where is the ship now? 

32 Bassoon. '' During Coleridge's residence in Stowey his friend 
Poole reformed the church choir, and added a bassoon to 
its resources. Mrs. Sanford {T. Poole and Ids Friends, i. 
247) happily suggests that this ' was the very original and 
prototype of the " loud bassoon " whose sound moved the 
wedding-guest to beat his breast.' " — Campbell, Coleridge's 
Poetical Works, p. 597. 

35 Nodding their heads. Cf. Ballad of the Dark Ladie: 

" But first the nodding minstrels go 
With music meet for lordly bowers." 

Also the Monodij on a Tea Kettle, written while Coleridge 
was still at Christ's Hospital : 

" Nodding their heads in all the pomp of woe." 

30 Minstrelsy. Who were the minstrels originally ? And just 
what does the poet mean here by minstrelsy ? " 
Drawn in the gloss is changed by Campbell into " driven." 
"Coleridge, I have no doubt, wrote driven, but in very 
small characters on the narrow margin of the Lyrical 
Ballads ; the word was misprinted drawn, and the mistake 
was overlooked then and after. The two words, written 
or printed, are not easily distinguishable." — Campbell, 
p. 597. In the Argument, as Dr. Garnett points out, the 
phrase is "How a ship . . . was driven by storms." 

41 Storm-blast. Here the personification is very different from 
the eighteenth-century manner of " printer's devil " per- 
soniiication, the " easy magic of an initial capital," which 
reached its culmination in such a phrase as " Inoculation, 
heavenly maid, descend ! " With something of the sim- 
plicity and the might of imagination of early peoples, the 
mariner personifies the forces of nature, endowing them 
with intelligence and will. In this, Coleridge departs from 
his prototype, the old ballad, in which figures of speech 
" in any artistic and intentional sort " are rare. 



30 NOTES 

45-50 Notice here a new stanza form. It is unlike any other 

six-line stanza in the poem. 
47 Treads the shadow. The ship is now so far south that it has 

the sun behind it ; and moving still soutliward it pursues 

its own shadow. 
50 Aye. Observe the pronunciation. 

Cf. " Vain Philosophy's aye-babbhng spring." — Aeolian Harp. 

61 And now there came both mist and snow. With the details 
here it is interesting to compare the following data from 
the log of Captain Thomas James' " Strange and dangerous 
voyage ... in his intended Discovery of the Northwest 
Passage into the South Sea : London, 1633," a book which 
Coleridge may very possibly have seen ; a copy of it was in 
the Bristol Library, of which Coleridge was a "regular 
frequenter." 

"All day and all night, it snowed hard;" "The nights are 
very cold ; so that our rigging freezes ; " " it prooved very 
thicke foule weather, and the next day, by two a Clocke in 
the morning, we found ourselves incompassed about with 
Ice ; " " "We had Ice not farre off about us, and some pieces 
as high as our Top-mast-head ; " "The seventeenth . . . we 
heard . . . the rutt against a banke of Ice that lay on the 
Shoare. It made a hoUOw and hideous noyse, like an over- 
fall of water, which made us to reason amongst ourselves 
concerning it, for we were not able to see about us, it being 
darke night and foggie ; " " The Ice . . . crackt all over the 
Bay, with a fearful! noyse ; " " These great pieces that came 
a grounde began to breake with a most terrible thundering 
noyse ; " " This morning ... we . . . came to saile, steer- 
ing betwixt great pieces of Ice that were a grounde in 40 
fad., and twice as high as our Top-mast-head." 

" There are many similar expressions, but here, jDerhaps, are 
more than enough to show that the correspondences are 
not accidental, especially as most of the contemporary 
Arctic explorers measured their icebergs by fathoms and 
not by their masts." — Athenceum, March 15, 1890. 

Cf . 1. 53 : " And ice, mast-high, came floating by." 



NOTES 81 

Professor Brandl says : " The poet's extensive reading about 
distant countries and seas stood him in good stead. In 
the ' Destiny of Nations ' he had adopted the History of 
Greenland by Crantz in describing the drifting field of ice, 
where 'the white bear liowls in agony.' Here in the 
'Ancient Mariner' he transposed the scene to the South 
Pole, with ' snowy cliffs ' and ' ice mast-high, as green as 
emerald,' and fearful cracking and splitting sounds." — 
Coleridge, p. 201. 

55 And through the drifts. Compare Tennyson : — 

" Beyond the lodge the city lies, 
Beneath its drift of smoke." — Talking Oak. 

Drifts is used by Coleridge then in the sense of " driving 

clouds " of mist and snow. 
Clifts. A form of cliffs. Cf . Dry den : — 

" I view the coast old Enuius once admired 
Where clifts on either side their points display." 

56 Sheen. Lustre. 

57 Nor shapes of men, etc. For a striking parallel see the pas- 

sage from Shelvocke, Appendix A, p. 50. 
Ken. See, descry. In this sense, archaic. 

62 Swound. Swoon. An obsolete form. 

63 Albatross. A web-footed sea-bird of the petrel family. "Al- 

batrosses inhabit the southern seas at large, and the whole 
Pacific ocean, but not the northern Atlantic. Some of 
them are the largest known sea-birds, and all are noted for 
their powers of flight, sailing for hours, and in any direc- 
tion with reference to the wind, without visible movement 
of the wings. . . . From their habit of following ships for 
days together without resting, albatrosses are regarded 
with feelings of attachment and superstitious awe by 
sailors, it being considered unlucky to kill one." — Cen- 
twy Dictionary. In English Note Books Hawthorne men- 
tions his visit to the Warwick Museum, where he saw 
an albatross "huge beyond imagination." And he adds, 
" I do not think that Coleridge could have known the size 
of the fowl when he caused it to be hung round the neck 
of his Ancient Mariner." 



32 NOTES 

The episode of the albatross was suggested by Wordsworth, 
who borrowed it from Shelvocke's Voyages. The bird 
there mentioned was black and was considered of ill-omeii 
because of his color. This detail of the color, which played 
an important part with Shelvocke and his men, Coleridge 
ignores altogether, possibly, as Dr. Garnett suggests, because 
he may never have seen the book, or else for artistic rea- 
sons. The fact that the bird was from his color naturally 
considered of ill-omen "greatly extenuates the slayer's 
offence." With this element omitted, then, the mariner 
is the more blameworthy, and more deserving of the 
spectral persecution. 

64 Thorough. The early form of through. 

The fog. Notice how in this and the preceding stanzas the 
poet keeps the attention fixed on the condition of sea and 
weather, after the first mention of the mist and snow. 

65 Christian soul. In what sense is soul here used? Does the 

poet conceive the spirit of man as embodied and made 
visible in the bird? Or is soul simply another term for 
human being, person ? Compare our familiar turn of 
speech, " She was a good soul." For the context to this 
passage refer to 1. 57. 

66 Hailed. Here in the sense of ivelcomed. 

67 Eat. An old form of the past participle no longer in good 

use. As an illustration of the extent to which Coleridge 
improved upon the first form of the poem, contrast this 
felicitous line with the verse in the 1798 edition, 

" The Mariueres gave it biscuit-worms " ! 

69 Thunder-fit. A shock or noise resembling thunder. Here fit 
approaches its original meaning of struggle. 

71 A good south wind, etc. The ship is now sailing north ; the 
point at wdiicli it changed its course is not marked specifi- 
cally. This method of implying action by dealing im- 
mediately with the results is characteristic of the ballad 
manner. We are given the inference ; we must supply the 
premises. " The knight rides out a-hunting, and by and 
by his riderless horse comes home, and that is all : 



NOTES 33 

* Toom [empty] hame cam the saddle 

But never cam he.' " — Beers, p. 275. 

The action itself is taken for granted. 

74 Mariner's. So in the editions of 1798, 1800, 1829. In the 

^'New Edition" of 1852 the form is plural, mariners'. 

75 In mist or cloud. The ice is broken, but the weather has not 

yet cleared. The continued presence of the fog and mist 
has a special significance with reference to the albatross. 
Cf. 11. 97-102. 

76 Vespers. Evensong: here, metaphorically, for evenings. 

Possibly it is a plural built up on vesper, the evening star, 
and hence the evening. 

79 God save thee, etc. Notice how the appearance of the mariner 

is suggested indirectly yet vividly by indicating its effect 
on the wedding-guest. 

80 Plague. The word with us in the sense of tease has come to 

have a trivial suggestion. We should take it in the older 
meaning of harass, trouble. Cf. Macbeth : — 

" We but teach 
Bloody instructions, which being taught return 
To plague the inventor." 

81 Cross-bow. How far is this a clue to the period of the poem ? 

" The Cross-bow was used by the English soldiers chiefly 
at sieges of fortified places, and on ship-board, in battles 
upon the sea." — Strutt, Sports and Pastimes. 

79-82 The closing stanza of the first part strikes the key-note of 
the poem. The mariner's crime is stated explicitly, and 
suggested is the long spectral persecution. 

83 -86 Notice the virtual repetition of an earlier stanza (11. 25- 
28), yet with essential variation. The details here reen- 
force the indication in 1. 71 as to the direction in which 
the ship is sailing. These repetitions of phrase are charac- 
teristic of the ballad manner. Cf. Mari/ Hamilton: — 

" ' O Marie, put on your robes o black, 
Or else your robes o brown, 
For ye maun gang wi me the night, 
To see fair Ediubro town.' 



34 NOTES 

" ' I winna put on my robes o black, 
Nor yet my robes o brown ; 
But I'll put on my robes o white, 
To shine through Edinbro town.' " 

— GUMMERB, p. 159. 

85 Still hid in mist. Note the continued insistence on this detail. 

87-90 Again the virtual repetition, yet with change. Here the 
variation introduced is the contrast of the mariner's present 
loneliness with the former companionship of the albatross. 

91-96 This six-line stanza, rimed differently from stanza 45-50, 
is the type of the six-line stanza used in the poem : the 
first, third, and fifth verses are unrimed, the second and 
fourth are rimed, and the sixth repeats the rime-word of 
the fourth. 

97 Nor dim nor red. Now the fog and the mist have cleared 

away ; the albatross, then, was associated in the mariner's 
mind with foul weather. Notice that the comma after 
" red " has, as it were, the force of "but." 

98 Uprist, rose. An old form. Cf. Chaucer : — 

" Floures fresshe, honouren ye this day 
For, when the sunne uprist, then wol ye sprede." 

104 The furrow followed free. In SihylUne Leaves the line was 
changed to read, "The furrow streamed off free." In a 
footnote Coleridge remarked : " In the former edition the 
line was — ' The furrow followed free ' ; but I had not been 
long on board a ship before I perceived that this was the 
image as seen by a spectator from the shore, or from 
another vessel. From the ship itself the Wake appears 
like a brook flowing off from the stern." When Coleridge 
wrote The Ancient Mariner he had never been at sea. By 
1817 he had crossed to Germany and he had made a long 
voyage to INIalta. In the Collected Works of 1 828 the ear- 
lier and unquestionably more musical line was restored. 
These changes suggest the interesting question as to how 
far a poet is justified in sacrificing fidelity of observation 
to metrical effect. 

106 That silent sea. It is not until this point that the really 
miraculous begins. " The tricks and fantasies of super- 



NOTES 35 

naturalism are meaningless and powerless save in alliance 
with the mysterious powers of human nature [cf. the cita- 
tion from Newman, post^ p. 36], and, failing this, not all 
the realistic circumstance in the world can give them life 
or meaning. And where this alliance between the evil 
within and the unknown powers without is less marked, 
the care wherewith a great romancer prepares the way for 
the supernatural, so that it comes as the bodily fulfill- 
ment of an unbodied fear, is well seen in the palmary 
instance of The Ancient Mariner. The skeleton ship, with 
the spectre-woman and her death-mate, is ushered in by all 
the silences and wonders of a tropical sea, by loneliness and 
dreams." — Raleigh, The English Novel, p. 223. Compare 
the citation from Watson, ante, pp. li-liii. 

113 Right above the mast. Where is the ship now ? 

Ill No bigger than the Moon. " Is it possible that the poet did 
not know the apparent diameter of the moon to be greater 
than that of the sun ? " — Poe, Marginalia. It is possible. 
It is possible as well that the poet did know that the appar- 
ent diameter of the moon is greater than that of the sun, 
and by a stroke of art, appealed not to what is true but to 
what people commonly suppose to be true. We know the 
sun to be actually many times larger than the moon, and 
unless we observe closely, we naturally infer that of course 
the sun looks larger. Hence the simile, appealing to the 
familiar though untrue, is more effective than if it adhered 
to a truth but little known. 

125 Slimy things. " In these monsters he [Coleridge] seems to 
have taken particular interest, and to have consulted vari- 
ous zoological works ; for the note-book of this date con- 
tains long paragraphs upon the alligators, boas, and 
crocodiles of antediluvian times." — Brandl, p. 202. 

127 About, about, etc. Possibly an echo of Macbeth : — 

"The weird sisters, haud in hand, 
Posters of the sea and land, 
Thus do go about, about :' 
Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, 
And thrice again, to make up nine. 
Peace! the charm's wound up," 



36 NOTES 

Reel. A lively dance, consisting of various circling or inter- 
twining figures. 

Rout. A troop, a band, a company. 
128 Death-fires. Electrical appearances about the rigging of ships, 
supposed to presage death. 

Cf . ' ' Mighty armies of the dead 

Dance like death-fires round her tomb." 

— Ode on the Departing Year. 

132 Spirit. Note especially the gloss. The spirit was a 
" demon," that is, " one of the invisible inhabitants of 
this planet, neither departed souls, nor angels." In the 
gloss to 11. 393 ff., the two spirits are characterized as the 
" Polar Spirit's fellow-demons." Cf. also the gloss to 11. 
345 ff. It is interesting to note what Cardinal J^ewman 
held as to the existence of angels and demons. In the first 
chapter of his Apologia, he says : '^ I viewed them [the 
angels], not only as the ministers employed by the 
Creator in the Jewish and Christian dispensations . . . 
but as carrying on . . . the Economy of the Visible AVorld. 
I considered them as the real causes of motion, light, and 
life, and of those elementary principles of the physical 
universe, which . . . suggest to us the notion of cause 
and effect, and of what are called the laws of nature . . . 
... I say of the Angels, '■ Every breath of air and ray of 
light and heat, every beautiful prospect, is, as it were, 
the skirts of their garments, the waving of the robes of 
those whose faces see God.' Again, I ask what would be 
the thoughts of a man who, 'when examining a flower, or 
a herb, or a pebble, or a ray of light . . . suddenly dis- 
covered that he was in the presence of some powerful 
being who was hidden behind the visible thing he was 
inspecting, — who, though concealing his wise hand, was 
giving them their beauty, grace, and perfection, as being 
God's instrument for the purpose ...?'... Also, besides 
the hosts of evil spirits, I considered there was a middle 
race, 8ai/xoi/ta, neither in heaven, nor in hell ; partially 
fallen, capricious, wayward ; noble or crafty, benevolent 
or malicious, as the case might be." It is on a similar 



NOTES 37 

belief or conception, a kind of pantheism, that Coleridge 
constructs the snpernaturalism of his poem. 

133 Nine. Perhaps chosen for its mystical significance. Cf. 
" vespers nine." See also the verses from Macbeth, ante, 
p. 35. 

139 Well-a-day. A variation of wellaway ; an exclamation of 
grief or sorrow. It is often found in the old ballads. 

141 Instead of the cross, etc. The meaning here is not clear. 
It may be that the mariner, as a Catholic, wore a cross 
about his neck, and that his fellow seamen removed this 
cross, and hung upon him instead, the albatross. Or, the 
passage may contain an allusion to a mediaeval custom. 
In the Middle Ages, Jews, lepers, heretics, etc., were obliged 
to wear some conspicuous mark of infamy: — the Jews 
had a large " wheel," or ring, of colored cloth, sewn on the 
garment; the lepers wore a special dress; and heretics 
were marked with two crosses, of different color from their 
clothes, sewn upon the breast. Hence the wearing of some 
special kind of cross might perhaps in the period repre- 
sented in the poem have been imposed upon offenders as a 
punishment; and the mariner may mean here that instead 
of the cross of infamy, the sailors hung about his neck 
the albatross, as a more appropriate mark of his ignominy. 
That the bird was meant to be the token of his guilt as well 
as a mere punishment seems to be borne out by the gloss to 
the passage. Finally, it is possible that Coleridge had in 
mind a blending of all this, or, on the other hand, that he 
intended no allusion to any custom, but simply hit upon 
the incident as a picturesque and impressive detail. 

143-148 Notice that in this stanza it is the second and sixth 
verses which are rimed, and the fourth verse repeats the 
rime-word of the second. 

152 I wist. Preterit of the verb, loit, to know, become aware. 
Cf. the phrase, "to wit," i.e., "namely," and the French 
equivalent, a saooir. 

149-156 'Note the precision of observation, the specific quality of 
the phrasing, and the suggestion of the sense by the sound 
of the verse. 

157-161 Here is a stanza form not before used in the poem. 



38 NOTES 

The fourth verse is made to rime with the third, and the 
fifth rimes with the second. 

164 Gramercy. From grand merci ; literally, " many thanks." An 
interjection expressing thankfulness, sometimes mingled 
with surprise. 
They for joy did grin. Coleridge remarks : " I took the 
thought of grinning for joy from my companion's remark 
to me, when we had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, 
and were nearly dead with thirst. We could not speak 
from the constriction, till we found a little puddle under 
a stone. He said to me : ' You grinned like an idiot ! ' 
He had done the same." — Table Talk, May 31, 1830. 

166 As they were drinking, i.e., as ifthej were, etc. 

168 Weal. Originally, wealth, prosperity : here, well-being. It 

is used at present chiefly in phrases, as, weal or woe, 
common weal, public weal, etc. 

169 Without a breeze, etc. Some had in dreams been assured of 

the spirit that was pursuing them (Cf. 11. 131 ff.); here 
is the first immediate and undoubted manifestation of 
supernatural agencies. 

170 Steadies. A nautical term : to remain in an upright position. 
178 Heaven's Mother. What does this ejaculation imply with 

regard to the mariner ? Cf . 1. 294. 
184 Gossameres. " A fine filmy substance, consisting of cobweb 
formed by various small spiders. ... It is seen in stubble- 
fields and on low bushes, and also floating in the air in 
calm, clear weather, especially in autumn. Threads of 
gossamer are often spun out into the air, several yards in 
length, till catching a breeze, they lift the spider and carry 
it on a long aerial voyage." — Century Dictionary. " The 
old legend says, that these are the remains of the Virgin 
Mary's winding-sheet, which fell from her when she was 
translated." — George, Ancient Mariner. Cf. the French 
term for gossamer, Jil de la vierge. In literature, the 
gossamer is the symbol of lightness and in substantiality. 
Cf. Romeo and Juliet: — 

" A lover may bestride the gossamer 
That idles in the wanton summer air, 
And yet not fall; so light is vanity." 



NOTES 39 

185 Her ribs. What is implied in this ? Cf. " The naked hulk," 

1. 195. 
188 A Death. A figure of death, a skeleton. 
190-194 This is the only five-line stanza in which the first verse 

is rimed. 
187-197. The symbolism here hardly needs explanation. 
193 Life-in-Death. For a significant allusion to this verse, cf. the 
Epitaph which Coleridge composed the year before his 
death : — 

"0, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C. ; 
That he who many a year with toil of breath 
Found death in life, may here find life in death! " 

196 Twain. An archaic form of two. 

197 The obvious misprint in Sibylline Leaves and in the edition 

of 1829 — " The game is done ! I've, I've w^on ! " — is here 
corrected . 
200 At one stride comes the dark. " Between the tropics there is 
no twilight. As the sun's last segment dips down, and 
the evening gun is fired, the constellations appear arrayed." 
Marginal note by Coleridge, quoted by Dr. Garnett. Cf. es- 
pecially the gloss. Also Kipling : — 

" An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 

'crost the Bay! " — Manclalay. 

203-211 Note the nine-line stanza, the only one in the poem. 
201-210 " Among some papers of Coleridge dated variously from 
1806, 1807, and 1810, there exists undated, the following- 
recast of these lines : — 

" ' With never a whisper on the main 
Off shot the spectre ship : 
And stifled words and groans of j)ain 

Mix'do„each™-».t^"''P- 

And we look'd round, and we look'd up, 
And fear at our hearts, as at a cup, 

The Life-blood seem'd to sip — 
The sky was dull, and dark the night, 
The helmsman's face by his lamp gleam'd bright, 

From the sails the dews did drip — 
Till olomb above the Eastern Bar, 
The horned moon, with one bright star 

Within its nether tip.' " — Campbell, p. 598. 



40 NOTES 

212 The star-dogged Moon. " Tt is a common superstition among 
sailors that something evil is about to happen whenever a 
star dogs the moon." — Manuscript note by Coleridge. 
Campbell remarks, " But no sailor ever saw a star within 
the nether tip of a horned moon." 

220 The souls did from their bodies fly, etc. For a similar con- 
ception of the soul as having form, compare Rossetti : — 

" And the souls mounting up to God 
Went by her like thin flames." 

— The Blessed Damozel. 

226-7 " For the two last lines of this stanza, I am indebted to 
Mr. Wordsworth. Tt was on a delightful walk from 
Nether Stowey to Dulverton, with him and his sister, 
in the Autumn of 1797, that this Poem was planned, and 
in part composed." Coleridge's note. 

245 Or ever. Before ever. 

284 A spring of love gushed from my heart. Lamb wrote to 
Southey in November, 1798, " If you wrote that review in 
the Critical Review, I am sorry you are so sparing of praise 
to the Ancient Marinere. So far from calling it as you do, 
with some wit, but more severity, a 'Dutch Attempt,' etc., 
I call it a right English attempt, and a successful one, to 
dethrone German sublimity. You have selected a passage 
fertile in unmeaning miracles, but have passed by fifty 
passages as miraculous as the miracles they celebrate. I 
never so deeply felt the pathetic as in that part, 

" ' A spring of love gusli'd from my heart, 
And I bless'd them unaware.' 

It stung me into high pleasure through sufferings." 
If the poem has a purpose, and that purpose is to teach the 
saving power of love, — the lesson set forth in the closing- 
stanzas, — then that lesson is unmistakably foreshadowed 
here. Here, too, is the culmination of the mariner's 
sufferings which resulted from the spectral persecution ; 
and here is the turning-point in the action of the poem. 
289 So free. In the sense of " thus freed." 

Notice that in all this Fourth Part, the part where the feel- 
ing is intensest, the diction is simplest, calling for the 



NOTES 41 

least comment. The supreme mark of real intensity and 
perfect sincerity is perfect simplicity. 
292 Sleep. Cf. Chrlstabd: — 

" For she belike hath druuken deep 
Of all the blessedness of sleep." 

To the mystery of sleep and the haunting influence of 

dreams Coleridge was peculiarly sensitive. 
Cf. Christahel: — 

" But though my slumber was gone by, 
This dream it would not pass away — 
It seems to live upon mine eye! " 
and — 

" With such perplexity of mind 
As dreams too lively leave behind." 
Cf. also SomelMng Childish, hut very Natural: — 

" Sleep stays not, though a monarch bids : 
So I love to wake ere break of day : 

For though my sleep be gone, 
Yet while 'tis dark, one shuts one's lids. 
And still dreams on." 

His special sensitiveness was undoubtedly due in part to 
opium. Later, when the habit had mastered him, sleep 
was no longer exquisite delight, no longer a blessing, but 
rather torture. In a letter he exclaims, " Pray for me, my 
dear friend, that I may not pass such another night as the 
last. When I am awake and retain my reasoning powers, 
the pang is gnawing ; but I am, except for a fitful moment 
or two, tranquil : it is the howling wilderness of sleep that 
I dread." 
Cf . The Pains of Sleep : — 

" The night's dismay 
Saddened and stunned the coming day. 
Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me 
Distemper's worst calamity." 

Here in The Ancient Mariner " Life-in-Death " is a "Night- 
mare," and it is interesting to recall that the whole poem 
had as its starting-point a dream. Indeed the work of 
Coleridge's "poetic prime," The Ancient Mariner, Kuhla 
Khan, and Christahel, is as — 

" A dream remembered in a dream." 



42 NOTES 

297 Silly. Originally, fortunate, blessed, then innocent, then 

weak, impotent and useless, as here; finally, simple, 
foolish. 

298 So. In the sense of thus. Cf . 1. 289. 

302 Dank. Damp, saturated with cold moisture. Cf. Henry IV, 

Part I : " Dank as a dog." 
308 Blessed ghost. A spirit in heaven. Ghost originally meant 

the breath, the soul of man. This meaning is XDreserved 

for us in the phrase, "to give up the ghost." In the sense 

of spirit, as the poet uses the word here, we have the word 

in the phrase, "the Holy Ghost." Our common use to-day 

limits the word to spectre, apparition. 
312 Sere. Or sear. Dry. Usually applied to vegetation. 
314 Fire-flags. Flashes or gleams of lightning. 

Sheen. Here an adjective modifying fire-flags. Cf . 1. 56, for 

the noun-form of the word. 
319 Sedge. Rushes, flags, tall grasses. 
335 ft". The navigation of the ship by the dead men was suggested 

by AVordsworth. 
354 Around, around, flew each sweet sound. So acutely sensitive 

are the mariner's perceptions that the sounds in which 

the angelic spirits take form he can almost see as they 

" dart " to the sun. 
358-372 This recall of home sounds, of pleasant country ways, of 

the voices of birds and woods and brooks, is inexjDressibly 

affecting. As in a dream or transport, the mariner escapes 

from immediate reality, and the music of the spirit-troop 

is a glimpse into heaven. 
395 Living life. In distinction from what other life? Cf. "bodily 

life," gloss to 1. 230. The idea is reen forced by the phrase, 

"in my soul," 1. 396. 
399 By Him who died on cross. From this affirmation it would 

seem that the demons were in the service of God and the 

lieavenly powers. 
407 Honey-dew. Ci.KuhlaKhan: — 

" For be on honey clew hath fed 
And drunk the milk of Paradise." 
" The name is properly applied to the sugary secretion 
from the leaves of plants, occurring most frequently in hot 



NOTES 43 

weather. It usually appears as small glistening drops, but 
if particularly abundant may drip from the leaves in con- 
siderable quantity, when it has been called manna." — 
Science, ITT, 737. 
414 Still as a slave. Cf . Coleridge's Osorio : — 

" O woman! 
I have stood sileut like a slave before thee." 

416 His great bright eye. The figure here may have been sug- 
gested by a stanza of Sir John Davies : — 

" For lo the sea that fleets about the laud, 
And Hke a girdle clips her solid waist, 
Music and measure both doth understand : 
For his great chrystal eye is always cast 
Up to the moon, and on her fixed fast." 

— Orchestra ; or A Poem on Dancing. 

Davies' poem was licensed in 1593 and published in 1596. 

Trance, in marginal note 422. If Coleridge read Captain 
James' Voyage, the following passage was probably not 
without its suggestion ; " For mine owne part, I give no 
credit to them at all [i.e. the fables told by ' some Port- 
ingales, that shoidd have come this way out of the South 
Sea '] ; and as little to the vicious, and abusive wits of later 
Portingals and Spaniards : who never speak of any difficul- 
ties : as shoalde water, Ice, nor sight of land ; but as if they 
had been brought home in a dreame or engine." 
446-451 In the essay on Witches, and Other Night Fears, Lamb 
remarks : *' Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimaeras dire — 
stories of Celaeno and the Harpies — may reproduce them- 
selves in the brain of superstition — but they were there be- 
fore. They are transcripts, types — the archetypes are in 
us, and eternal. How else should the recital of that, which 
we know in a waking sense to be false, come to affect us at 
all? . . . Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such 
objects, considered in their capacity of being able to inflict 
upon us bodily injury? — O, least of all! These terrors 
are of older standing. They date beyond body — or, with- 
out the body, they would have been the same. All the 



44 NOTES 

cruel, tormenting, defined devils in Dante . . . are they 
one. half so fearful to the spirit of a man, as the simple idea 
of a spirit unembodied following him — ' Like one that on 
a lonesome road' [here he quotes the stanza]. That the 
kind of fear here treated of is purely spiritual — that it is 
strong in proportion as it is objectless upon earth — that it 
predominates in the period of sinless infancy — are difficul- 
ties, the solution of which might afford some probable 
insight into our ante-mundane condition, and a peep at 
least into the shadow land of preexistence." 

465 The light-house top, etc. Notice that these details are enum- 
erated here in reverse order from 11. 23-4. 

467 Own countree. A form common in the old ballads. 

470 let me be awake. I.e. may this prove to be actual and 
real. Or, if it be a dream, let me dream on forever. 

472 ff. Notice the mariner's extreme sensitiveness to all impres- 
sions. He discriminates among " tones " in color and light ; 
so acute are his senses that even the very absence of sound 
has a positive value, smiting upon his nerves actively. Cf. 
" The moonlight steeped in silentness ; " " white with silent 
light; " "the silence sank like music on my heart." 

489 Rood. Cross. 

490 A man all light, a seraph-man. Seraphs are the "burning 

or flaming angels, consisting of or like fire, and associated 
with the ideas of light, ardor, and purity." — Century Dic- 
tionary. 
Cf . JMilton : " The flaming seraph, fearless, though alone." 
Also Pope : " The rapt seraph that adores and burns." 

507 Blast. A striking use of the word. 

512 Shrieve. An old form of shrive. To receive a confession 
from a penitent and grant absolution. 

524 Trow. Believe, think. 

532 Note here the " run-on " verse, carrying over into the next 
stanza. Even wdthin the stanza the " i-un-on " verse is " a 
rare occurrence in ballad metre." — Gummere, p. 353. 

535 The ivy-tod. The ivy-bush. 

612 ff., He prayeth well, who loveth well, etc. With these lines we 
come upon the perplexing question of the " purpose " or the 
moral of the poem. On this point Coleridge himself re- 



NOTES 45 

marked : " Mrs. Barbauld once told me that she admired 
the Ancient Mariner very much, but that there were two 
faults in it — it was improbable, and had no moral. As for 
the probability, I owned that that might admit some ques- 
tion ; but as to the want of a moral, I told her that in my 
own judgment the poem had too much; and that the only 
or chief fault, if I might say so, was the obtrusion of the 
moral sentiment so openly on the reader as a principle or 
cause of action in a work of such pure imagination. It 
ought to have had no more moral than the Arabian Nights' 
tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by the side 
of a well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo ! a genie 
starts up, and says he must kill the aforesaid merchant he- 
cause one of the date shells had, it seems, put out the eye 
of the genie's son." — Tahle Talk, May 31, 1830. 
That Coleridge had little sympathy with the " moral " is fur- 
ther shown in his note on the concluding lines of his poem. 
The Raven, in which he handles the same theme as that of 
The Ancient Mariner^, the revenge executed by lesser crea- 
tures for injuries done them by man. To the closing line 
of the poem, " Revenge was sweet," Coleridge added in 
the Sibylline Leaves the lines : — 

" [We must not thiuk so, but forget and forgive, 
And what Heaven gives life to, we'll still let it live!] " 

The couplet expresses the same sentiment as the conclusion 
of The Ancient Mariner. But against these lines, on the 
margin of a copy of Sibylline Leaves, Coleridge wrote : 
" Added thro' cowardly fear of the Goody ! What a Hol- 
low, where the Heart of Faith ought to be, does it not be- 
tray — this alarm concerning Christian morality, that will 
not permit even a Raven to be a Raven, nor a Fox a Fox, 
but demands conventicular justice to be inflicted on their 
unchristian conduct, or at least an antidote to be annexed." 

We may further note that " one of the most pe^'sistent fea- 
tures of the German literature of the romantic revival [the 
German movement influenced the English] — perhaps its 
greatest blemish — is its fondness for the obvious moral. 
This really springs from a double sense : first a love of the 



46 NOTES 

copy book maxim as the inspiring idea of a poem, and sec- 
ondly, a love of obviousness that prevents the artist from 
letting facts speak for themselves, and leads him constantly 
to trespass on the domain of the moral aphorist." ^ If such 
was the temper of the time, it may be that Coleridge made 
concessions to it more or less unconsciously. 

On the other hand, the lesson of The Ancient Mariner, the les- 
son of love and sympathy for the lesser creatures, is taught in 
Coleridge's lines To a Young Ass, and the sentiment finds 
expression in many of his other early poems. Again, " Are 
not cattle and plants," he asks, "permeated through and 
through with the Divinity who has created all things to form 
one harmonious whole ? " Finally, and this is the weightiest 
testimony in support of his fundamental and conscious 
seriousness of purpose in The Ancient Mariner, he wrote in 
the Biographia Literaria that no private feeling should pre- 
vent his publishing his autobiography " if continued reflec- 
tion should strengthen my present belief, that my history 
would add its contingent to the enforcement of one impor- 
tant truth, to wit, that we must not only love our neigh- 
bors as ourselves, but ourselves likewise as our neighbors ; 
and that we can do neither unless w^e love God j^bove 
Soth " — Chap. XXIV. 

Some critics maintain that The Ancient Mariner is an allegory, 
and they try to read into it subtle and far-sought meanings. 
But the poem has its meaning in the measure with which 
( it is able to impress each reader for himself with its power 
and beauty, and to stir and quicken him ; for he should re- 
member what Coleridge himself tells us, that poetry has 
for its immediate object pleasure, not truth. The highest 
poetry is written primarily, not to inculcate a lesson, but 
to open to the human spirit the inexhaustible treasure of 
the " loveliness and the wonders of the world before us." 

1 W. W. Greg, English Translations of Lenore, Modern Quarterly of 
Language and Literature. August, 1899. 



APPENDIX A 

RELATIVE TO THE COMPOSITION AND SOURCES 
OF THE POEM 

On the composition of The Ancient Mariner Wordsworth has 
left the following note : — 

"In the antumn of 1797, he [Coleridge], my sister, and myself, 
started from Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon, with a view to 
visit Linton, and the Valley of Stones near to it; and as our united 
funds were very small, we agreed to defray the expense of 
the tour by writing a poem, to be sent to the ' New Monthly 
Magazine.' . . . Accordingly we set off, and proceeded, along the 
Quantock Hills, towards Watchet ; and in the course of this walk 
was planned the poem of the 'Ancient Mariner,' founded on a 
dream, as Mr. Coleridge said, of his friend J\lr. Cruikshank. Much 
the greatest part of the story was Mr. Coleridge's invention, 
but certain parts I suggested ; for example, some crin^§-vc.s to be 
committed which should bring upon the Old NavigtuLor, as Cole- 
ridge afterwards delighted to call him, the spectral persecution, as 
a consequence of that crime and his own wanderings. I had been 
reading in Shelvocke's ' Voyages,' a day or two before, that, while 
doubling Cape Horn, they frequently saw albatrosses in that lati- 
tude, the largest sort of sea fowl, some extending their wings 
twelve or thirteen feet. ' Suppose,' said I, ' you represent him as 
having killed one of these birds on entering the South Sea, and 
that the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge 
the crime.' The incident was thought fit for the purpose, and 
adopted accordingly. I also suggested the navigation of the ship 
by the dead men, but do not recollect that I had anything more to 
do with the scheme of the poem. The gloss wdth which it was 
subsequently accompanied was not thought of by either of us at 
the time, at least not a hint of it was given to me, and I have no 
doubt it was a gratuitous after-thought. AVe began the composi- 

47 



48 APPENDIX A 

tion together on that to me memorable evening: I furnished two 
or three lines at the beginning of the poem, in particular — 
" * And hsteu'd like a three years' child : 
The Mariner had his will.' 

These trifling contributions, all but one, which Mr. C. has with 
unnecessary scrupulosity recorded, slipped out of his mind, as well 
they might. As we endeavoured to proceed conjointly (I speak of 
the same evening), our respective manners proved so widely differ- 
ent, that it would have been quite presumptuous in me to do any- 
thing but separate from an undertaking upon which I could only 
have been a clog. . . . The 'Ancient Mariner' grew and grew till 
it became too important for our first object, which was limited to 
our expectation of five pounds ; and we began to think of a volume 
which was to consist, as Mr. Coleridge has told the world, of 
poems chiefly on supernatural subjects, taken from common life, 
but looked at, as much as might be, through an imaginative me- 
dium." — Femvick Note, Alemoirs of William Wordsworth, London, 
1851, vol. I, pp. 107-8. 

Wordsworth's note, stating the facts about the composition of 
The Ancient Mariner, should be supplemented by Coleridge's ac- 
count of the literary significance of the poem : — 

" During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neigh- 
bours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal 
points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader 
by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of 
giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of im- 
agination. The sudden charm, which accidents of light and shade, 
which moonlight or sunset, diffused over a known and familiar 
landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining 
both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested 
itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems 
might be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and 
agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural ; and the excel- 
lence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections 
by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally accom- 
pany such situations, supposing them real. And real in this 
sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever 
source of delusion, has at any time believed himself under super- 
natural agency. For the second class, subjects were to be chosen 



APPENDIX A 49 

from ordinary life ; the characters and incidents were to be such 
as will be found in every village and its vicinity where there is a 
meditative and feeling mind to seek after tlieni, or to notice them 
when they present themselves. 

" In this idea originated the plan of the ' Lyrical Ballads ' ; in wliich 
it was agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons 
and characters supernatural, or at least romantic ; yet so as to 
transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance 
of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that 
willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes 
poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose 
to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of 
every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, 
by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, 
and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world 
before us ; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence 
of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet see 
not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand. 

" With this view I wrote the ' Ancient Mariner,' and was prepar- 
ing, among other poems, the ' Dark Ladie,' and the ' Christabel,' in 
which I should have more nearly realized my ideal than I had 
done in my first attempt. But Mr. Wordsworth's industry had 
proved so much more successful, and the number of his poems so 
much greater, that my compositions, instead of forming a balance, 
appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous matter. J\Ir. 
Wordsworth added two or three poems written in his own char- 
acter, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction which is 
characteristic of his genius. In this form the Lyrical Ballads were 
published." — BiograpUa Literaria, Chap. XIV. 

Further details are contained in the following letter by the Rev. 
Alexander Dyce to H. N. Coleridge : — 

" When my truly honoured friend Mr. Wordsworth was last in 
London, soon after the appearance of De Quincey's papers in ' Tait's 
Magazine,' he dined with me in Gray's Inn, and made the follow- 
ing statement, which, I am quite sure, I give you correctly : 
* " The Ancient Mariner " was founded on a strange dream, which 
a friend of Coleridge had, who fancied he saw a skeleton ship, with 
figures in it. We had both determined to write some poetry for a 
monthly magazine, the profits of which were to defray the ex- 



50 APPENDIX A 

penses of a little excursion we were to make together. " The 
Ancient Mariner " was intended for this periodical, but was too 
long. I had very little share in the composition of it, for I soon 
found that the style of Coleridge and myself would not assimilate. 
Besides the lines (in the fourth part), 

" ' And thou art long, and lank, and brown, 
As is the ribbed sea-sand," 

I wrote the stanza (in the first part), 

" ' He holds him with his glittering eye — 
The Wedding-Guest stood still, 
And listens like a three years' child : 
The Mariner hath his will," 

and four or five lines more in different parts of the poem, which I 
could not now point out. The idea of ^'■shooting an albatross" loas 
mine; for 1 had been reading Sheh^ocke's Voyages, wJiich probably Col- 
eridge never saio. I also suggested the reanimation of the dead 
bodies, to work the ship.' " — Note to The Ancient Mariner in New 
Edition of Poems, 1852. 

The book referred to by Wordsworth is A Voyage Round the 
World By the Way of the Great South Sea, Performed in the Years 
1719, 20, 21, 22, in the Speedwell of London, etc.. By Captain 
George Shelvocke, etc., London, 1726. The significant passages 
are as follows : — 

"From the latitude of 40 deg. [south] to the latitude of 52 
deg. 30 min. [south] we had a sight of continual shoals of seals 
and penguins, and were constantly attended by Pintado birds, 
about the bigness of a pigeon. . . . These were accompanied by 
Albitrosses, the largest sort of sea-fowls, some of them extending 
their wings 12 or 13 foot." — pp. 59-60. 

" The cold is certainly much more insupportable in these, than 
in the same latitudes to the Northward; for, although we were 
pretty much advanced in the summer season, and had the days 
very long, yet we had continual squals of sleet, snow and rain, and 
the heavens were perpetually hid from us by gloomy dismal clouds. 
In short, one would think it impossible that any living thing- 
could subsist in so rigid a climate ; and, indeed, we all observed, 
that we had not the sight of one fish of any kind, since we were 
come to the Southward of the streights of le Mair, nor one sea- 



APPENDIX A 51 

bird, except a disconsolate black Albitross, who accompanied us for 
several days, hovering about us as if he had lost himself, till Ilat- 
ley, (my second Captain) observing, in one of his melancholy fits, 
that this bird vv^as always hovering near us, imagin'd, from his 
colour, that it might be some ill omen. That which, 1 suppose, 
induced him the more to encourage his superstition, was the con- 
tinued series of contrary tempestuous winds, which had oppress'd 
us ever since we had got into this sea. But be that as it would, 
he, after some fruitless attempts, at length, shot the Albitross, not 
doubting (perhaps) that we should have a fair wind after it. I 
must own, that this navigation is truly melancholy, and was the 
more so to us, who were by ourselves without a companion, which 
would have somewhat diverted our thoughts from the reflection of 
being in such a remote part of the world." — pp. 72-3. 

Still another source from which Coleridge probably drew in- 
cidents and suggestions for his poem is the Epistle of Paulinus, 
Bishop of Nola, in the latter half of the fourth century, addressed 
by him to Micarius the vice-prefect of Rome. The letter tells the 
story of a vessel laden with corn, which having been stranded on 
the coast of Lucania, had been rescued from the perils of the deep 
by the Almighty himself. The ship, which had been wrecked near 
Sardi'iia, had been deserted by all the crew, except an old man 
who was left at the pump. "The old man, who knew nothing of 
what had happened, felt the vessel pitching and rolling, and com- 
ing up from the hold found there was no object in view but the sea 
and the sky. The feeling of loneliness increased the terror which 
the perils that surrounded him naturally inspired. Six whole days 
and nights he passed without breaking bread . . . and longing- 
only for death to close the dreary scene." But the Lord gave him 
"new life with the food of His word." When he roused himself 
to work the ship, he " saw that angelic hands were busj^ about his 
task." " Nothing was left for the mariner to do but to sit admiring 
w^hile his labour was forestalled by invisible hands. . . . Some- 
times indeed it was vouchsafed to him to behold an armed band — 
one may suppose of heavenly soldiers — who kept their w^atches on 
the deck and acted in all points as seamen. What crew indeed but 
a crew of angels was worthy to work that vessel which was steered 
by the Pilot of the world? At the helm, sat our dear Lord." At 
length the ship made an end of its course on the Lucanian shore. 



52 APPENDIX A 

Inspired by the Lord, "some fishermen put forth from land; 
they were in two small boats, and seeing the ship in the offing, 
were in the utmost terror and attempted to fly. . . . With loud 
and repeated shouts the old man called them back ; they took 
counsel with each other, and, the Lord inspiring them, they 
understood they might approach the vessel without fear." They 
finally towed the vessel into the harbor. — Gentlemen's Magazine, 
Oct. 1853. 

Coleridge's possible indebtedness to Captain James' Voyage is 
set forth in the Notes on the poem (ante, p. 30) ; for further details 
see Brandl, Coleridge, pp. 197-204. 

On the "study of sources" Coleridge himself set little value. 
In the Preface to Christabel he says, " There is amongst us a set of 
critics, who seem to hold, that every possible thought and image is 
traditional ; who have no notion that there are such things as 
fountains in the world, small as well as great; and who would 
therefore charitably derive every rill they behold flowing, from a 
perforation made in some other man's tank." 

The scientific method in the study of literature needs here no 
vindication. We have only to remember that its ultimate value 
lies in imparting a knowledge which enables us to apprehend in 
some measure the wonders of the undiscoverable and transcendent 
j)0wer we call genius. 



APPENDIX B 

The Text of 1798 

THE RIME OF THE ANCYENT MARINERE, 
IN SEVEN PAETS^ 



ARGUMENT'^ 

How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by Storms to 
the cold Country towards the South Pole ; and how from thence 
she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific 
Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what 
manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country. 

It is an ancyent Marinere,^ 

And he stoppeth one of three : 
" By thy long grey beard and thy glittering eye 

" Now wherefore stoppest me ? 

^ " The Bridegroom's doors are open'd wide 

" And I am next of kin ; 
" The Guests are met, the Feast is set, — 
"May'st hear the merry din. 

1 In 1800, the title was changed to The Ancient Mariner, A Poet's 
Reverie. 

2 The Argument In 1800 read: How a Ship having first sailed to the 
Equator, was driven by Storms, to the cold Country towards the South 
Pole ; how the Ancient Mariner, cruelly, and in contempt of the laws of 
hospitality, killed a Sea-bird ; and how he was followed by manj- strange 
Judgements ; and in what manner he came back to his own Country. 

3 In the text of 1800, most of the extreme archaisms in spelling, words, 
and phrases, disappeared. Ancyent became Ancient, " ne breath ne 
motion" (1. 112) was changed to "7ior breath «or motion " ; " withouten 
wind" (1. 161) became '' without a breeze," etc. The more important 
changes in the text are given in the footnotes. 

53 



54 APPENDIX B 

But still he holds the wedding-guest — 
10 There was a Ship, quoth he — 

" Nay, if thou'st got a laughsome tale, 
" Marinere ! come with me." 

He holds him with his skinny hand, 
Quoth he, there was a Ship — 
15 "Now get thee hence, thou grey-beard Loon 

" Or my Staff shall make thee skip. 

He holds him with his glittering eye — 

The wedding guest stood still 
And listens like a three year's child ; 
20 The Marinere hath his will. 

The wedding guest sate on a stone, 

He cannot chuse but hear: 
And thus spake on that ancyent man, 

The bright-eyed Marinere. 

25 The Ship was cheer'd, the Harbour clear 'd — 

Merrily did we drop 
Below the Kirk, below the Hill, 
Below the Light-house top. 

The Sun came up upon the left, 
30 Out of the Sea came he : 

And he shone bright, and on the right 
Went down into the Sea. 

Higher and higher every day. 
Till over the mast at noon — 
35 The wedding-guest here beat his breast, 

For he heard the loud bassoon. 

The Bride hath pac'd into the Hall, 

Red as a rose is she ; 
Nodding their heads before her goes 
40 The merry Minstralsy. 



APPENDIX B 55 

The wedding-guest he beat his breast, 

Yet he cannot chuse but hear : 
And thus spake on that ancyent Man, 

The bright-eyed Marinere. 

45 Listen, Stranger ! Storm and Wind,i 

A Wind and Tempest strong ! 
For days and weeks it play'd us freaks — 
Like Chaff we drove along. 

Listen, Stranger ! Mist and Snow, 
50 And it grew wond'rous cauld : 

And Ice mast-high came floating by 
As green as Emerauld. 

And thro' the drifts the snowy clifts 
Did send a dismal sheen ; 
55 Ne shapes of men ne beasts we ken — 

The Ice was all between. 

The Ice was here, the Ice was there, 

The Ice was all around : 
It crack'd and growl'd, and roar'd and howl'd — 
60 Like noises of a swound.^ 

At length did cross an Albatross, 

Thorough the Fog it came ; 
And an it were a Christian Soul, 

We hail'd it in God's name. 

111.45-50 Listen, Stranger! etc. Instead of this aud the five lines 
following, there was : 

" But now the Northwind came more fierce, 
There came a Tempest strong ! 
And Southward still for days and weeks 
Like chaff we drove along. 

" And now there came both Mist and Snow, 
And it grew wondrous cold ; " 

21. 60 "A Avild and ceaseless sound." 

Coleridge afterward returned to the reading of 1798. 



36 APPENDIX B 

(j5 The Marineres gave it biscuit-worms, 

And round and round it flew : 
The Ice did split with a Thunder-fit ; 
Tlie Hehnsman steer'd us thro'. 

And a good south wind sprung up behind, 
70 The Albatross did follow ; 

And every day for food or play 
Came to the Marinere's hollo ! 

In mist or cloud on mast or shroud 
It perch 'd for vespers nine, 
75 Whiles all the night thro' fog smoke-white ^ 

Glimmer'd the white moon-shine. 

" God save thee, ancyent Marinere ! 

" From the fiends that plague thee thus — 
" Why look'st thou so ? " — with my cross bow 
80 I shot the Albatross. 



II 

The Sun came up upon the right, 

Out of the Sea came he ; 
And broad as a weft upon the left 

Went down into the Sea. 

85 And the good south wind still blew behind, 

But no sweet Bird did follow 
Ne any day for food or play 
Came to the Marinere's hollo ! 

And T had done an hellish thing 
90 And it would work 'em woe : 

For all averr'd, I had kili'd the Bird 
That made the Breeze to blow. 

1 1. 75 Fog smoke-white. Corrected in the Errata to " fog-smoke white. 



APPENDIX B 57 

Ne dim ne red, like God's own head, 
The glorious Sun uprist : 
95 Then all averr'd, I had kill'd the Bird 

That brought the fog and mist, 
'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay 
That bring the fog and mist. 

The breezes blew, the white foam flew, 
100 The furrow follow'd free : 

We were the first that ever bui'st 
Into that silent Sea. 

Dow^n dropt the breeze, the Sails dropt down, 
'Twas sad as sad could be 
105 And we did speak only to break 

The silence of the Sea. 

All in a hot and copper sky 
The bloody sun at noon, 
Right up above the mast did stand, 
110 No bigger than the moon. 

Day after day, day after day, 

We stuck, ne breath ne motion, 
As idle as a painted Ship 

Upon a painted Ocean. 

115 Water, water, every where 

And all the boards did shrink ; 
Water, water, every where, 
Ne any drop to drink. 

The very deeps did rot : O Christ ! 
120 That ever this should be ! 

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs 
Upon the slimy Sea. 

About, about, in reel and rout 
The Death-fires danc'd at night ; 
125 The water, like a witch's oils, 

Burnt o-reen and blue and white. 



58 APPENDIX B 

And some in dreams assured were 
Of the Spirit that plagued us so : 
Nine fathom deep he had follow'd us 
130 From the Land of Mist and Snow. 

And every tongue thro' utter drouth 
AVas wither'd at the root; 

We could not speak no more than if 
We had been choked with soot. 

135 Ah wel-a-day ! what evil looks 

Had I from old and young ; 
Instead of the Cross the Albatross 
About my neck was hung. 



Ill 

I saw a something in the Sky ^ 
140 No bigger than my fist ; 

At first it seem'd a little speck 

And then it seem'd a mist : 
It mov'd and mov'd, and took at last 

A certain shape, I wist. 

145 A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist ! 

And still it ner'd and ner'd ; 
And, an it dodg'd a water-sprite, 
It plung'd and tack'd and veer'd. 

With throat unslack'd, with black lips bak'd 
150 Ne could we laugh, ne wail : 

Then while thro' drouth all dumb they stood 
I bit my arm and suck'd the blood 
And cry'd, A sail ! a sail ! 

111. 139-140. I saw a something in the sky. lu place of this and the 
following line, tliis stanza was inserted : 

" So past a weary time ; each throat 
Was parch'd and glaz'd each eye, 
When, looking westward, I beheld 
A something in the sky." 



APPENDIX B 59 

With throat unslack'd, with black lips bak'd 
155 Agape they hear'd me call : 

Gramercy ! they for joy did grin 
And all at once their breath drew in 
As they were drinking all. 

She doth not tack from side to side — 
160 Hither to work us weal 

Withouten wind, withouten tide 
She steddies with upright keel. 

The western wave was all a flame, 

The day was well nigh done ! 
165 Almost upon the western wave 

Rested the broad bright Sun ; 
AVhen that strange shape drove suddenly 

Betwixt us and the Sun. 

And strait the Sun was fleck'd with bars 
170 (Heaven's mother send us grace) 

As if thro' a dungeon grate he peer'd 
With broad and burning face. 

Alas ! (thought I, and my heart beat loud) 
How fast she neres and neres ! 
175 Are those her Sails that glance in the Sun 

Like restless gossameres? 

Are those ^ her naked ribs, which fleck'd ^ 

The sun that did behind them peer? 
And are those two all, all the crew, 
180 That woman and her fleshless Pheere? 

His bones were black with mau}^ a crack. 
All black and bare, T ween ; 

1 1. 177. Those, corrected in Errata to " these." 

211. 177-180. Instead of this stanza was the following : 

" Are those her Ribs, thro' which the Sun 
Did peer, as thro' a grate? 
And are these two all, all her crew, 
That Woman, and her Mate? " 



60 APPENDIX B 

Jet-black and bare, save where with rust 
Of mouldy damps and charnel crust 
185 They're patch'd with purple and green. 

Her lips are red, her looks are free, 

Her locks are yellow as gold : 
Her skin is as white as leprosy. 
And she is far liker Death than he ; 
190 Her flesh makes the still air cold. 

The naked Hulk alongside came 
And the Twain were playing dice ; 
" The Game is done ! I've won, I've won ! " 
Quoth she, and whistled thrice. 

195 A gust of wind sterte up behind 

And whistled thro' his bones ; 
Thro' the holes of his eyes and the hole of his mout 
Half-whistles and half-groans. 

With never a whisper in the Sea 
200 Off darts the Spectre-ship ; 

While clombe above the Eastern bar 
The horned Moon, with one bright Star 
Almost atween the tips. 

One after one by the horned Moon 
205 (Listen, O Stranger! tome) 

Each turn'd his face with a ghastly pang 
And curs'd me with his ee. 

Four times fifty living men. 
With never a sigh or groan, 
210 With heavy thump, a lifeless lump 

They dropp'd down one by one. 

Their souls did from their bodies fly, — 

They fled to bliss or woe ; 
And every soul it passed me by, 
215 Like the whiz of my Cross-bow. 



APPENDIX B 61 



IV 



^' I fear thee, ancyent Marinere ! 

" I fear thy skinny hand ; 
" And thou art long and lank and brown 

" As is the ribb'd Sea-sand. 

220 "I fear thee and thy glittering eye 

" And thy skinny hand so brown — 
Fear not, fear not, thou wedding guest ! 
This body dropt not down, 

Alone, alone, all all alone 
225 Alone on the wide wide Sea ; 

And Christ would take no pity on 
My soul in agony. 

The many men so beautiful. 
And they all dead did lie ! 
230 And a million million slimy things 

Liv'd on — and so did I. 

I look'd upon the rotting Sea, 

And drew my eyes away ; 
I look'd upon the eldritch deck, 
235 And there the dead men lay. 

I look'd to Heaven, and try'd to pray ; 

But or ever a prayer had gusht, 
A wicked whisper came and made 

My heart as dry as dust. 

240 I clos'd my lids and kept them close. 

Till the balls like pulses beat ; 
For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky 
Lay like a load on my weary eye. 
And the dead were at my feet. 



62 APPENDIX B 

245 The cold sweat melted from their limbs, 

Ne rot, lie reek did they ; 
The look with which they look'd on me. 
Had never passed away. 

An orphan's cnrse would drag to Hell 
250 A spirit from on high : 

But O ! more horrible than that 

Is the curse in a dead man's eye ! 
Seven days, seven nights I saw that curse, 
And yet I could not die. 

255 The moving Moon went up the sky 

And no where did abide : 
Softly she was going up 
And a star or two beside — 

Her beams bemock'd the sultry main 
260 Like morning frosts yspread ; 

But where the ship's huge shadow lay. 
The charmed water burnt alway 
A still and awful red. 

Beyond the shadow of the ship 
265 I watch'd the water-snakes : 

They mov'd in tracks of shining white ; 
And when they rear'd, the elfish light 
Fell off in hoary flakes. 

Within the shadow of the ship 
270 I watch'd their rich attire : 

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black 
They coil'd and swam; and every track 
Was a flash of golden fire. 

O happy living things ! no tongue 
275 Their beauty might declare : 

A spring of love gusht from my heart, 

And I bless'd them unaware ! 
Sure my kind saint took pity on me, 
And I bless'd them unaware. 



APPENDIX B 63 



280 The self-same moment I could pray ; 

And from my neck so free 
The Albatross fell off, and sank 
Like lead into the sea. 



sleep, it is a gentle thing 
285 Belov'd from pole to pole ! 

To Mary-queen the praise be yeven 
She sent the gentle sleep from heaven 
That slid into my soul. 

The silly buckets on the deck 
290 That had so long remain'd, 

1 dreamt that they were fill'd with dew 
And when I awoke it rain'd. 

My lips were wet, my throat was cold. 
My garments all were dank ; 
295 Sure I had drunken in my dreams 

And still my body drank. 

I mov'd and could not feel my limbs, 

I was so light, almost 
I thought that I had died in sleep, 
300 And was a blessed Ghost. 

The roaring wind ! it roar'd far off. 

It did not come anear ; 
But with its sound it shook the sails 

That were so thin and sere. 

305 The upper air bursts into life. 

And a hundred fire-flags sheen 
To and fro they are hurried about ; 
And to and fro, and in and out 
The stars dance on between. 



64 APPENDIX B 

310 The coming wind doth roar more loud ; 

The sails do sigh, like sedge : 
The rain pours down from one black cloud 
And the Moon is at its edge. 

Hark ! hark ! the thick black cloud is cleft, 
315 And the Moon is at its side : 

Like waters shot from some high crag, 
The lightning falls with never a jag 
A river steep and wide. 

The strong wind reach'd the ship : it roar'd 
320 And dropp'd down, like a stone ! 

Beneath the lightning and the moon 
The dead men gave a groan . 

They groan'd, they stirr'd, they all uprose, 
Ne sj)ake, ne mov'd their eyes : 
325 It had been strange, even in a dream 

To have seen those dead men rise. 

The helmsmen steerd, the ship mov'd on ; 

Yet never a breeze up-blew ; 
The Marineres all 'gan work the ropes, 
330 Where they were wont to do : 

They rais'd their limbs like lifeless tools — 

We were a ghastly crew. 

The body of my brother's son 
Stood by me knee to knee : 
335 The body and I pull'd at one rope, 

But he said nought to me — 
And I quak'd to think of my own voice ^ 
How frightful it would be ! 

The day-light dawn'd — they dropp'd their arms 
340 And cluster'd round the mast : 

Sweet sounds rose slowly thro' their mouths 
And from their bodies pass'd. 

i]l. 337, 338 omitted. 



APPENDIX B 65 

Around, around, flew each sweet sound, 
Then darted to the sun : 
345 Slowly the sounds came back again 

Now niix'd, now one by one. 

Sometimes a dropping from the sky 

I heard the Lavrock sing ; 
Sometimes all little birds that are 
350 How they seem'd to fill the sea and air 

With their sweet jargoning, 

And now ' twas like all instruments, 

Now like a lonely flute ; 
And now it is an angel's song 
355. That makes the heavens be mute. 

It ceas'd : yet still the sails made on 

A pleasant noise till noon, 
A noise like of a hidden brook 

In the leafy month of June, 
360 That to the sleeping woods all night 

Singeth a quiet tune. 

Listen, O listen, thou Wedding-guest ! i 

''Marinere ! thou hast thy will : 
" For that, which comes out of thine eye, doth make 
365 "My body and soul to be still." 

Never sadder tale was told 

To a man of woman born : 
Sadder and wiser thou wedding-guest ! 

Thou'lt rise to morrow morn. 

370 Never sadder tale was heard 

By a man of woman born : 
The Marineres all return'd to work 
As silent as beforne. 

1 11. 362-377. These four stanzas omitted. 



66 APPENDIX B 

The Marineres all 'gan pull the ropes, 
375 But look at me they n'old : 

Thought I, I am as thin as air — 
The}'^ cannot me behold. 

Till noon we silently sail'd on 
Yet never a breeze did breathe : 
380 Slowly and smoothly went the ship 

Mov'd onward from beneath. 

Under the keel nine fathom deep 
From the land of mist and snow 

The spirit slid : and it was He 
385 That made the Ship to go. 

The sails at noon left off their tune 
And the Ship stood still also. 

The sun right up above the mast 
Had fix'd her to the ocean : 
390 But in a minute she 'gan stir 

With a short uneasy motion — 

Backwards and forwards half her length 
With a short uneasy motion. 

Then, like a pawing horse let go, 
395 She made a sudden bound : 

It flung the blood into my head, 
And I fell into a swound. 

How long in that same fit I lay, 

I have not to declare ; 
400 But ere my living life return'd, 

I heard and in my soul discern'd 

Two voices in the air, 

" Is it he? quoth one, " Is this the man? 
" By him who died on cross, 
405 " With his cruel bow he lay'd full low 

" The harmless Albatross. 



U tF©. 



APPENDIX B 67 



" The spirit who 'bideth by himself 

" In the land of mist and snow, 
" He lov'd the bird that lov^d the man 
410 " Who shot him with liis bow. 

The other was a softer voice, 

As soft as honey-dew : 
Quoth he the man hath penance done. 

And penance more will do. 



VI 

First Voice. 



415 ''But tell me, tell me ! speak again, 

" Thy soft response renewing — 
" What makes that ship drive on so fast? 
" What is the Ocean doing ? 

Second Voice. 

"Still as a Slave before his Lord, 
420 " The Ocean hath no blast : 

"His great bright eye most silently 
" Up to the moon is cast — 

" If he may know which way to go, 
" For she guides him smooth or grim. 
425 " See, brother, see ! how graciously 

"She looketh down on him. 

First Voice. 

" But why drives on that ship so fast 
" Withouten wave or wind ? 

Second Voice. 

' ' The air is cut away before, 
430 " And closes from behind. 



68 APPENDIX B 

" Fly, brother, fly ! more high, more high, 

" Or we shall be belated : 
" For slow and slow that ship will go, 

" When the Mariiiere's trance is abated." 

435 I woke, and we were sailing on 

As in a gentle weather : 
'Twas night, calm night, the moon was high : 
The dead men stood together. 

All stood together on the deck, 

440 For a charnel-dnngeon fitter : 

All fix'd on me their stony eyes 

That in the moon did glitter. 

The pang, the curse, with which they died, 
Had never pass'd away : 
445 I could not draw my een from theirs 

Ne turn them up to pray. 

And in its time the spell was snapt, 

And I could move my een : 
I look'd far-forth, but little saw 
450 Of what might else be seen. 

Like one, that on a lonely road 
Doth walk in fear and dread, 

And having once turn'd round, walks on 
And turns no more his head : 
455 Because he knows, a frightful fiend 

Doth close behind him tread. 

But soon there breath'd a wind on me, 

Ne sound ne motion made : 
Its path was not upon the sea 
460 In ripple or in shade. 

It rais'd my hair, it fann'd my cheek, 
Like a meadow-gale of spring — 

It mingled strangely with my fears, 
Yet it felt like a welcoming. 



APPENDIX B 

465 Swiftly, svviftl}^ flew the ship, 

Yet she sail'd softly too : 
Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze — 
On me alone it blew. 

dream of joy ! is this indeed 
470 The light-house top I see ? 

Is this the Hill ? Is this the Kirk ? 
Is this mine own countree ? 

We drifted o'er the Harbour-bar, 
And I with sobs did pray — 
475 "O let me be awake, my God ! 

" Or let me sleep alway ! " 

The harbour-bay was clear as glass, 

So smoothly it was strewn ! 
And on the bay the moon light lay, 
480 And the shadow of the moon. 

The moonlight bay was white all o'er,i 
Till rising from the same, 

Full many shapes, that shadows were, 
Like as of torches came. 

485 A little distance from the prow 

Those dark-red shadows were ; 
But soon I saw that my own flesh 
Was red as in a glare. 

1 turn'd my head in fear and dread, 
490 And by the holy rood. 

The bodies had advanc'd, and now 
Before the mast they stood. 

They lifted up their stiff right arms. 
They held them straight and tight ; 

1 1. 481-502. These five stanzas omitted. 



70 APPENDIX B 

495 And each right-arm burnt like a torch, 

A torch that's borne upright. 
Their stony eye-balls giitter'd on 
In the red and smoky light. 

I pray'd and turn'd my head away 
500 Forth looking as before. 

There was no breeze upon the bay, 
No wave against the shore. 

The rock shone bright, the kirk no less 
That stands above the rock : 
505 The moonlight steep'd in silentness 

The steady weathercock. 

And the bay was white with silent light. 

Till rising from the same 
Full many shapes, that shadows were, 
510 In crimson colours came. 

A little distance from the prow 
Those crimson shadows were : 

I turn'd my eyes upon the deck — 
O Christ ! what saw I there? 

515 Each corse lay fiat, lifeless and flat ; 

And by the Holy rood 
A man all light, a seraph-man, 
On every corse there stood. 

This seraph-band, each wav'd his hand : 
520 It was a heavenly sight : 

They stood as signals to the land. 
Each one a lovely light : 

This seraph-band, each wav'd his hand, 
No voice did they impart — 
525 No voice ; but O ! the silence sank, 

Like music on my Jieart. 



APPENDIX B 71 



Eftsones I heard the dash of oars, 

I heard the pilot's cheer : 
My head was turn'd perforce away 
530 And I saw a boat appear. 

Then vanish'd all the lovely lights ; ^ 

The bodies rose anew : 
With silent pace, each to his place, 
Came back the ghastly crew. 
535 The wind, that shade nor motion made, 

On me alone it blew. 

The pilot, and the pilot's boy 
I heard them coming fast : 
Dear Lord in Heaven ! it wdH a joy, 
540 The dead men could not blast. 

I saw a third — I heard his voice : 

It is the Hermit good ! 
He singeth loud his godly hymns 

That he makes in the wood. 
545 He'll shrieve my soul, he'll wash away 

The Albatross's blood. 



VII 

This Hermit good lives in that wood 
Which slopes down to the Sea. 

How loudly his sweet voice he rears ! 
550 He loves to talk with Marineres 

That come from a far Contree. 

He kneels at morn and noon and eve - 

He hath a cushion plump ; 
It is the moss, that wholly hides 
555 The rotted old Oak-stump. 

1 11. 531-536. This stanza omitted. 



72 APPENDIX B 

The Skiff-boat ne'rd : I heard them talk, 
" Why, this is strange, I trow ! 

" Where are those lights so many and fair 
" That signal made but now ? 

560 " Strange, by my faith ! the Hermit said — 

"And they answer'd nob our cheer. 
" The planks look warp'd, and see those sails 

" How thin they are and sere ! 
" I never saw aught like to them 
565 " Unless perchance it were 

" The skeletons of leaves that lag 

" My forest brook along : 
" When the Ivy-tod is heavy with snow, 
" And the Owlet whoops to the wolf below 
570 " That eats the she-wolf's young. 

" Dear Lord ! it has a fiendish look — 

(The Pilot made reply) 
" I am a-fear'd. — " Push on, push on ! 

" Said the Hermit cheerily. 

575 The Boat came closer to the Ship, 

But I ne spake ne stirr'd ! 
The Boat came close beneath the Ship, 
And strait a sound was heard ! 

Under the water it rumbled on, 
580 Still louder and more dread : 

It reach'd the Ship, it split the bay; 
The Ship went down like lead. 

Stunn'd by that loud and dreadful sound. 
Which sky and ocean smote : 
585 Like one that hath been seven days drown 'd 

My body lay afloat : 

But, swift as dreams, myself I found 
Within the Pilot's boat. 



ArPENBIX B 73 

Upon the whirl, where sank the Ship, 
590 The boat spun round and round : 

And all was still, save that the hill 
Was telling of the sound. 

I mov'd my lips : the Pilot shriek 'd 
And fell down in a fit. 
595 The Holy Hermit rais'd his eyes 

And pray'd where he did sit. 

I took the oars : the Pilot's boy. 

Who now doth crazy go, 
Laugh'd loud and long, and all the while 
600 His eyes went to and fro, 

" Ha ! ha ! " quoth he — " full plain I see, 

" The devil knows how to row." 

And now all in mine own Countree 
I stood on the firm land ! 
G05 The Hermit stepp'd forth from the boat, 

And scarcely he could stand. 

" O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy Man ! 

The Hermit cross'd his brow — 
" Say quick," quoth he, " I bid thee say 
610 " What manner man art thou ? 

Forthwith this frame of mine was wrench'd 

With a woeful agony. 
Which forc'd me to begin my tale 

And then it left me free. 

615 Since then at an uncertain hour, ^ 

Now of times and now fewer, 
That anguish comes and makes me tell 
My ghastly aventure. 

111. 615-618. Instead of this stauza was the following: 
" Since then at an uncertain hour 
That agony returns ; 
And till my ghastly tale is told 
This heart within nie burns." 



74 APPENDIX B 

I pass, like night, from land to land ; 
620 I have strange power of speech ; 

The moment that his face 1 see 
I know the man that must hear me ; 
To him my tale I teach. 

What loud uproar bursts from that door ! 
625 The Wedding-guests are there ; 

But in the Garden-bower the Bride 

And* Bride-maids singing are : 
And hark the little Vesper-bell 

Which biddeth me to prayer. 

630 O Wedding-guest ! this soul hath been 

Alone on a wide wide sea : 
So lonely 'twas, that God himself 
Scarce seemed there to be. 

O sweeter than the Marriage-feast, 
635 'Tis sweeter far to me 

To walk together to the Kirk 
With a goodly company. 

To walk together to the Kirk 
And all together pray, 
640 While each to his great father bends, 

Old men, and babes, and loving friends, 
And Youths, and Maidens gay. 

Farewell, farewell ! but this I tell 
To thee, thou wedding-guest ! 
645 He prayeth well who loveth well, 

Both man and bird and beast. 

He prayeth best who loveth best, 

All things both great and small : 
For the dear God, who loveth us, 
650 He made and loveth all. 



APPENDIX B 75 



The Marinere, whose eye is bright, 
Whose beard with age is hoar, 

Is gone ; and now the wedding-guest 
Turn'd from the bridegroom's door. 

655 He went, like one that hath been stunn'd 

And is of sense forlorn : 
A sadder and a wiser man 
He rose the morrow morn. 



1\AP^f^^ 



